Damage investigation and modeling of 3D woven ceramic matrix composites from X-ray tomography in-situ tensile tests

The present paper proposes an investigation of the failure events in a melt-infiltrated SiC/SiC composite. In-situ X-ray microtomography tensile tests were performed at room temperature and at 1250 °C in air. Digital Volume Correlation has been used to identify the damage mechanisms within the material at increasing loads and to propose a damage scenario. Realistic finite element meshes have been constructed from the 3D images to numerically reproduce the experiments at the meso-scale. Elastic simulations exhibit stress concentrations in the planes containing the weft tows. The first cracks and subsequent damage localization were found to appear within these planes thanks to the analysis of the in-situ tomographic data.