Talk:Reinforced carbon–carbon

75.41.252.208 22:24, 25 September 2006 (UTC)Reinforced carbon-carbon is also used in aircraft brake discs. Is there a difference between this rather more common material and maunafacturing process and that of the space shuttle TPS?

What Carbon Carbon is not
The article is about a silicon carbide product that is not carbon carbon Please keep the advertisers from converting all articles to their product. Carbon Carbon has never been used for breaks on anything. Please remove SIC yo its own article and write something about Carbon Carbon Scottprovost (talk) 16:39, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Speedy conclusions
Carbon-carbon is well-suited to structural applications at high temperatures, or where thermal shock resistance and/or a low coefficient of thermal expansion is needed. While it is less brittle than many other ceramics, it lacks impact resistance; '''Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed after one of its RCC panels was broken by the impact of a piece of foam insulation from the Space Shuttle External Tank. '''This was a catastrophic failure partly because original shuttle design requirements did not consider such a violent impact to be likely.

I think that this paragraph suggests that it is because RCC was used on the space shuttle that it was destroyed. If ceramics were used instead of RCC, the same castostrophy would have happened.

Perhaps the formulation could be clarified.

Dispute over opening paragraphs, and dispute over image description
I dispute the opening paragraphs - with particular concern over this sentance "Reinforced Carbon-Carbon (carbon-carbon or RCC) is a composite material consisting of carbon fiber reinforcement in a matrix of graphite, often with a silicon carbide". "Carbon-fibre reinforced carbon" (usually abbreviated C/C, and not RCC) is a "stand-alone" compound, and is not the same as "Carbon fibre-reinforced silicon carbide" (abbreviated C/SiC) which was mentioned in the opening sentance. These are two very different materials, and and have very differing applications, which have been confused throughout the article.

Pure carbon-carbon materials can be used in automotive applications (brake discs and clutch plates), but are normally only used in racing cars, such as Formula 1 cars, because of their very limited durability - in that the discs and clutch plates will be worn out in as little as 200 miles.

Carbon fibre-reinforced silicon carbide is a material wich is used primarily in road cars (albeit high performance cars, such as the Bugatti Veyron, Porsche 911, and Audi R8, Audi RS6 and Audi RS4) for both brake discs and the brake pads. In these road-going applications, the discs have a huge lifespan, stated by the disc manufacturer and the car manufacturer to be upto 300,000 kilometers or 185,000 miles - substancially differernt to pure carbon-carbon !!!!!

Furthermore, pure carbon-carbon can NOT be described as a "ceramic" - however, it is correct to describe Carbon fibre-reinforced silicon carbide as a ceramic composite compound.

Finally, the second image in the article of the Ferrari brake disc is NOT a carbon-carbon item, but is actually a carbon fibre-reinforced silicon carbide disc.

I therefore think that a separate article be created for "carbon fibre-reinforced silicon carbide". 78.32.143.113 (talk) 09:13, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You probably have a good idea with the carbon fiber reinforced silicon carbide separate article. However, we would need to ensure we don't merely "branch off with a Stub".  Is there enough information on the differences to justify a second article?  Also, as a "professional critique", doublecheck your spelling, it definitely improves the appearance of your work, and lends greater weight to your suggestions. CameronB (talk) 13:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Columbia foam test (re: edit with summary noting "see talk page")
I edited the caption to the image showing the hole made in the leading edge test article during the CAIB investigation foam impact tests at Southwest Research Institute. The investigators did not have sufficient information to determine exactly what happened or to determine at precisely what, speed, and position the foam struck the RCC. Tens of blocks of foam were shot from an air gun at this test article (with various fiberglass and RCC panels installed) and caused varying degrees of damage; most impacts caused only cracks of varying severity, and this test was the only one that produced a large open hole which could explain the breakup of Columbia (disintegration of the aluminum structure of the wing and subsequent breakup due to aerodynamic forces after the wing damage became severe enough to cause the failure of attitude control) during entry. The CAIB concluded that this test which produced the large hole was the "smoking gun" that proved plausible their theory that the foam strike had made a substantially large hole in the wing leading edge that allowed plasma (superheated air) to enter the wing and melt the aluminum structure. The test does not prove that this actually happened, and while it is the accepted explanation, and by far the most plausible (and I believe it), it is not an absolute fact. Describing the test as "simulating an event during launch" (which is a paraphrased quote) is misleading in that it implies that all details about the event that are relevant and significant to simulation are known, though in fact that the event even occurred is not absolutely known. It is incredibly likely, in part due to the lack of a good competing theory, but it is not absolutely known to be a fact. (Note that by the standard of there being no better theory, geocentrism was an incredibly likely theory before the discoveries of Galileo, and prior to his public announcement of his findings most people would have been foolish to argue against the theory of geocentrism, though in fact, unknown to them, it was false.)

I may not have worded the revised caption the best way, and if someone thinks the current wording implies a casting of suspicion upon the accepted theory and wants to reword it, I support that, so long as the caption still does not purport that it is proven that Columbia burned up because a piece of foam struck the RCC on the orbiter's wing leading edge making a hole in it comparable to that shown. Again, it very probably did, but it still possibly did not. It is possible that foam cracked the RCC but that a hole only opened up as it passed through the hot reentry plasma stream, or that the foam struck the ceramic thermal tiles and the RCC failed due to some other cause, or that the RCC did not leak plasma at all and the plasma entered and melted the wing structure through some unknown and heretofore imagined process. We should not overstate what we only mostly but do not entirely know. 71.242.7.208 (talk) 02:37, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The picture caption misidentified the source of the RCC panel as Space Shuttle Enterprise. Enterprise was not configured for spaceflight and has fiberglass in place of RCC. Enterprise panels were used in the Columbia investigation to test the test apparatus and procedure and to minimize loss of RCC panels. Fiberglass is much stronger than RCC and did not get any holes in it, however minor fiberglass damage implied that the same force would cause major damage to RCC. The panel with a hole in it is RCC panel 8 from Space Shuttle Atlantis. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.2.82.56 (talk) 23:31, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Category:Fibre-reinforced polymers?
Does this belong in Category:Fibre-reinforced polymers? It's stretching "polymers", but as a development of such materials into a new matrix I can see some value to including it. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:24, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

No. Carbon Carbon has no polymers in it. It has nothing to do with layup or any such thing. Carbon Carbon has nothing but Carbon in it. Scottprovost (talk) 16:41, 28 November 2017 (UTC)