Infusion fabricated oxide CMC (IFOX) – Exploring the potential for the automatable, near-net shape fabrication of all oxide ceramic matrix composites

Abstract

Fibre reinforced all oxide ceramic matrix composites (CMC) have made significant advancements over the past 20 years and are now finding their way into commercial applications. Various fabrication technologies for continuous fibre-reinforced oxide CMC exist, e.g. hand-lamination, vacuum-bagging and filament winding. While all available processes entail different advantages and disadvantages, they all require various amounts of manual processing steps during fabrication. The lack of automation and serial production capability, however, is a major drawback for the commercial production of oxide CMC and limits their more widespread application. To address the ever growing demands and requirements of future components and to fully exploit the commercial application potential of oxide CMC, new and improved fabrication technologies are needed. The development of a new vacuum-(pressure)-assisted slurry infusion technology for oxide CMC has been a focus of recent work at DLR. This new technology is characterised by a continuous and automatable infiltration and drying process that can be applied to various types of fibre preforms and promises serial production capabilities of near-net shape oxide CMC components. The general operating principle and prototype setup for the reproducible fabrication of oxide CMC panels will be presented along with a comparison of material properties. Furthermore, the possibilities of the IFOX process for the fabrication of complex 3D component designs will be discussed.