CHESS Seminar Series: "Chemical and Mechanical Response of Carbon Preform in High Temperature Oxidizing Environments"

Noon April 25, 2022
Virtual

Abstract

Ablative thermal protection system (TPS) materials for spacecraft are composites that are often made out of carbon-based fiber network and a polymeric matrix. It is thought that during ablation, failure occurs at the binder material which acts as the “glue” holding fibers together. Ablation is the result of many coupled and competing thermal, mechanical, and chemical phenomena, and it is difficult to isolate the role of each on the overall degradation of the TPS.  Here we develop ablation models in direct-simulation Monte Carlo code, SPARTA, and atomic-scale tensile response models in molecular dynamics code, LAMMPS to demonstrate the oxidation-induced deterioration of these materials.

Biography

Victoria Arias is a graduate student in the Mechanical Science and Engineering PhD program in the Center for Hypersonics Entry Systems Studies.

Co-advised by Dr. Kelly Stephani and Dr. Harley Johnson, she models in-depth oxidation of carbon materials using a direct-simulation Monte Carlo code, and oxidation-induced mechanical behavior of amorphous carbon and carbon fiber atomic structures using molecular dynamics. Victoria is also a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Fellow with sponsor Dr. Justin Haskins at NASA Ames Research Center.