LAUSR

Abstract To improve the ablation performance of carbon/carbon (C/C) composite materials, a WSi2–ZrSi2 composite-reinforced ZrxHf1–xC/SiC coating was prepared on the substrate surface via patterning strengthening method. The results show that this coating can protect the substrate from failure for 300 s under an oxyacetylene flame at 2600 °C. Owing to the presence of W, an extremely dense oxide layer was formed on the surface of the coating during initial ablation, which progressively led to the expulsion of the product of oxidation (WO3) from the inner layer, as well as to holes and cracks on healing the coating surface, thereby significantly improving the ablation performance of the C/C composites. In addition, the excellent ablative performance and mechanism of the coating were analysed using volatility diagrams.