Determination of the Mechanical Properties of the Lightweight Ablative Material Zuram

Abstract

The ablative material ZURAM has been developed by the German Aerospace Center DLR. It is manufactured from a rigid carbon felt impregnated with phenolic resin. It has a low density of approximately 0.36 -0.4 g/cm³. Arc jet tests were carried out up to heat fluxes of 13.5 MW/m² indicating the potential of the material with recession rates of approximately 0.3 mm/s. To characterize the material in detail to facilitate the design for space vehicles, the complete set of thermal and mechanical material properties has to be established. This paper will present the determination of the mechanical properties related to the microstructure. A characterization in tension, compression and shear was carried out resulting in the respective moduli and strength values. It was found that the material has an anisotropic behavior. Since the material is rather delicate in comparison to other structural materials, stress and strain measurements were in part also based on optical measurements to not disturb the material response.

Decomposition of carbon/phenolic composites for aerospace heatshields: Detailed speciation of phenolic resin pyrolysis products

“…The material used to perform this study is the phenolic resin of the Zuram ® carbon/phenolic ablator [1]. Preliminary testing showed that the carbon fibers in the material do not affect the pyrolysis product distribution, therefore it was decided to focus on the resin, thus achieving higher resolution.…”

“…State-of-the-art ablative materials, based on a short carbon fiber preform impregnated with phenolic resin, are known as carbon/phenolic composites [1].…”

“…Several carbon/phenolic materials have been successfully applied to entry scenarios [10,11], such as the Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA ® ) from NASA, its Space-X variant (PICA-X ® ) or the European Asterm ® from Airbus. In the present work, the Zuram ® material developed by the German Aerospace Agency (DLR) for research purposes was used [1]. This material is representative of the carbon/phenolic composite family and its data can be made publicly available without restrictions.…”

Determination of heat capacity of carbon composites with application to carbon/phenolic ablators up to high temperatures

“…In the following, we illustrate the performance of the detailed procedure through an example application to the carbon/phenolic ablator Zuram R , a research material developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Stuttgart [22,23]. Zuram R is made of a rigid carbon fiber preform (Calcarb R CBCF 18-2000, ρ bulk = 180 ± 30kg m −3 ) which is infiltrated with a liquid phenolic resin and later polymerized [22,23]. In the present study, the version of Zuram R used is 18/50.…”

Analytical solution for multi-component pyrolysis simulations of thermal protection materials

“…During the atmospheric entry of spacecraft, the high temperatures achieved (> 4000 K) cannot be withstood by any known material [1]. A successful solution for shielding spacecraft is the use of carbon/phenolic ablative thermal protection materials (TPMs) [2][3][4][5][6][7]. These materials undergo physico-chemical transformations by which they absorb part of the incoming heat while getting decomposed.…”