EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF PYROCARBON FORMATIONS 
IN ABLATED LAYERS OF REINFORCED PLASTICS

V. V. Pasichnyi and V. N. Bulanov

UDC 536.3:536.45

An experimental study has been made of the deposits of 
pyrocarbon in the process of ablation of two types of reinforced thermal-protection 
materials with a phenol-formaldehyde binder: glass-cloth laminate 
with an arrangement of the layers perpendicular to the direction of 
heating with a 25% content of carbon in the starting material and 
glass-cloth lavsan laminate with cloth layers parallel to heating 
(50% carbon). The experiments were conducted in a solar furnace with 
a 2.0 m concentrator for a constant heat flux of 50 
W/cm2 modeling the heating of the bottom part 
of rockets. Zones of active deposition of pyrocarbon have been established 
by layer-by-layer chemical analysis for carbon, based on which a structural 
scheme of the ablating layer of glass-cloth lavsan laminate has been 
proposed.

I. N. Frantsevich Institute of Problems of Materials 
Science, Kiev, Ukraine; email: pasich@ipms.kiev.ua. Translated from 
Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 77, No. 3, pp. 16-18, May-June, 
2004. Original article submitted March 27, 2003.