The influence of zirconia fibre on ablative composite materials

Zirconia fibres have excellent high temperature ablation resistance and have been widely used in ablative materials. In this paper, zirconia fibre was used for reinforcing the ablative composite materials to study the influence of zirconia fibre had upon the mechanical properties and the high temperature ablation properties of such composites. The results showed that the bending strength of the material was also good and reached a maximum of 13.05 MPa. After sintering at 1400°C, the bending strength was also great which could reach 13.05 MPa. In addition, the corrosion resistance of the composites was excellent and the oxygen-acetylene line ablation rate was 0.03 mm s−1 when the fibre content was 30 wt-%.