Ablation behavior of rare earth La-modified ZrC coating for SiC-coated carbon/carbon composites under an oxyacetylene torch

To improve the ablation resistance of carbon/carbon (C/C) composites at ultra-high temperature, La-modified ZrC coating was prepared on SiC-coated C/C composites by supersonic atmosphere plasma spraying. The coating shows a significant improvement on the ablation resistance compared with ZrC coating and could protect C/C composites for more than 120 s under heat flux of 2.4 MW/m2. La acted as a role in promoting the liquid phase sintering of ZrO2 and forming a compact scale with high thermal stability, improving the ablation resistance of C/C composites.