8th International Symposium on NDT in Aerospace, November 3-5, 2016

A Study on Highly Porous Carbon-Carbon Aircraft Brake Disc

using Air Coupled Ultrasonic
Suresh Chand Jangir1, Srinivasa.V1, Ramesh Kumar. M1,
More info about this article: http://www.ndt.net/?id=20613

Ramesh Sundaram1, GururajaRao.J2

1
Advanced Composites Division, CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories,
P.B.No.1779, HAL Airport Road, Bangalore – 560017
Phone: +91 80 25086402, Fax: +91 80 25267352; e-mail: srinivasa_v@nal.res.in, rameshrk@nal.res.in
2
Advanced System Laboratory, DRDO, Hyderabad; E-mail: rao214gm@gmail.com

Abstract
Carbon-Carbon (C-C) composites is a special class of ceramic matrix composites used in manufacturing of high
temperature applications has excellent properties like high specific heat and thermal conductivity, lower in
thermal expansion, good wear resistance and retention of mechanical properties. Inspection of these category of
composite is a challenge as it possesses more of deceptive and attenuate. Air Coupled Ultrasonic (ACU) is used
to over these inspection footraces. Evaluation of these Non Destructive Testing (NDT) results is a huge task
involving expertise in manufacturing and NDT inspection. As Carbon-Carbon (C-C) composites is more
attenuative and developing a standard / reference was more difficult and further evaluation on the actual aircraft
brake disc becomes a mammoth task. Air Coupled Ultrasonic (ACU) inspection parameters were frozen and the
brake disc are inspected and evaluated to the requirements of the approving authorities.

Keywords: Carbon-Carbon (C-C) composites, Air Coupled Ultrasonic (ACU), non-contact ultrasonic, aircraft
carbon brake disc

1. Introduction
Composites of different types; ceramic, polymer and metal matrix are being used in
aircraft industries for structures. These range of composites are being manufactured using
chemical vapour infiltration, liquid metal infiltration, carbon-carbon composites, VARTM,
autoclave moulding process. One of the important applications of C-C composites is the
Carbon-Carbon aircraft brakes. This is in the form of multiple discs and are used in
various civilian commercial aircrafts due to its excellent combination of properties like
high specific heat, good thermal conductivity, very less co-efficient of thermal expansion,
retention of mechanical properties at high operating temperatures and excellent wear
resistant. Manufacturing of C-C brake disc is a mammoth task involving lot of time during
development as the process of infiltration is very slow.
One of the challenges of Non Destructive Testing (NDT) is that these types of
composites are generally more attenuated. Furthermore, ceramic composites have
inherent porosity with multiple phases and degrees of non-uniformity. The porosity in
Carbon-Carbon composites is in the range of 5 to 15%. Conventional water coupled
ultrasonic technique is not feasible for the Carbon-Carbon composites due to the
inherently high porosity levels. This paper describes the challenges faced in the Non
 Destructive Evaluation (NDE) [1,2] followed for inspection of these C-C disc.

2. Manufacturing Process

Manufacturing of C-C brake disc is a cumbersome and time consumption process.

Chemical Vapour Infiltration (CVI) and Liquid pitch/resin Impregnation methods [3,4,5]
are two important methods for the manufacturing of C-C composites. The CVI process is
gaseous process in which the hydrocarbon gases diffuse [6] into the carbon fibre preform
and cracked high temperature and deposits the solid carbon on the fibre surface forming
the carbon matrix. This a very also process, which takes about 3 months or more to get the
C-C composite of required density. The other process involves a repeated impregnation
and carbonation of carbon fibres preforms with carbon rich materials like pitch or resin.
Several cycles of impregnation and pyrolysis is required to get the required densities.
These process are the densification processes, and there always a residual porosity at the
end of the process, the amount which depends on the final density of the product. This
porosity makes the C-C products more attenuating and challenge to carry out the NDT
especially the ultrasonic based ones [7,8].

3. Results and Evaluation

Non Destructive Evaluation process is being followed using Air Coupled Ultrasonic
(ACU) technique have been used with very high power and low frequency ultrasonic
transducer [5,9] for specific inspection requirements. Evaluation of the NDT results
requires knowledge in the manufacturing process as well as analytical capability of Non-
Destructive Evaluation. The C-C disc is having minimum thicknesses of 1.0” with/without
cut-outs. Since the C-C disc is highly porous and the thicknesses are higher, the most
feasible method of inspection is through transmission Air Coupled Ultrasonic (ACU)
technique.
3.1 ACU Inspection: High transduction Non-Contact Ultrasound Second WaveTM, Ultran
system [8,9,10] is being used for inspection of the C-C brake disc. This system is built to
suit the inspection of highly porous composite components [11,12,13].
 Transducer

Ref laminate

Figure 1 Test setup of ACU on a reference panel

ACU techniques have been used for inspection of C-C disc with the following parameters
based on the iteration conducted during experiments:
Frequency – 500 KHz Voltage – 325 volt
Burst – 2 Gain – 75 dB
PRF – 100 Hz LPF – 800 KHz
HPF – 80 KHz Scan resolution – 1 x 1 mm
Scan speed – 50 mm/sec Index speed – 20mm/sec
Ambient air path between transducer faces – 85mm.

The parameters followed for inspection produce lot of noise resulting in difficulties in
receiving the flawless signal for analysis. Signals received on a good healthy C-C disc [14]
have less amplitude due to inherent property of the material; it is difficult to differentiate
the signal on C-C with porosity on a good region and porous region. By ACU, different
category discs were inspected and evaluated. The NDE results have given vital
information for the improvisation of the process to achieve the desired final quality.
During this experiments many C-C brake disc have been inspected and evaluated.
3.2 C-C brake disc analysis:
C-C brake discs were processed through Resin/Pitch impregnation and pyrolysis route. The
disc densities were increased by subjected to densification cycles which involves repeated
impregnation and pyrolysis cycles. The discs of different densities are obtained by carrying
out different No. densification cycles. It has been observed that, when the disc is densified
beyond certain extent, the micro cracking has occurred within the discs [15]. The
occurrence of micro cracking within the disc is actually revealed in the NDT. This gives
an excellent input that up to what level of densification can be achieved without damaging
the discs.

Porous
Region Region
in Air

Figure 2 Good (LHS) and porosity accumulated (RHS) micro

cracked (due to over densification) C-C rotor disc
Many number of C-C rotor brake disc with cut out was inspected and evaluated. The brake
disc which has very less porosity considered as good sample. Based on the qualitative
approach methods the other disc was evaluated and qualified. The C-C disc having highly
porous when compared with good disc is shown in figure 2. In the highly porous disc the
micro porous are accumulated during infiltration process of manufacturing led to weaken
the disc when compared with good one. Based on this exercise confidence level was build-
up to inspection any level of porous with different thickness can be inspected and
evaluated. The stator disc with cut out in the ID of the C-C brake disc. Few discs were
without cut out too. In the stator disc shown has very high level of porous when compared
with the good stator disc in figure 3. It is observed that the peak to peak scale of the ACU
image the highly porous disc in the range of 31 to 35 dB, but the good disc has peak to
peak attenuation levels of 16 dB. This wide range of dB levels brings out the differences
between the good and porous disc which is predictable phenomena.
 Frame

Figure 3 Good (LHS) and highly porous (RHS) C-C stator disc

4. Conclusion
The C-C disc manufacturing process was stabilized to attain very less porous disc of rotor
and stator for it intended application. NDE is the back bone of this process improvement
towards production standards. During this process the NDE procedure and parameters were
also iterated in identification of porosity and other defects. NDE analysis play a crucial role
in the acceptance of the CVI manufacturing process of C-C brake disc for aircraft
applications. Based on the criticality of the disc i.e very high porous disc, the disc was
reprocessed for further improvement to reduce the porosity level. This was carried out based
on the NDE analysis report. Due to this exercise the rejection rate was reduced and led to
cost saving and production time of the programme.

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