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Ceramic-matrix composites (CMC) made of carbon and silicon carbide dual matrix reinforced with carbon fibres (C/C-SiC) have exceptional heat, thermal shock, creep, and wear resistance, while also having little density and high strength. In comparison to monolithic ceramics, CMC possess ductility and damage tolerance, which opens this material for severe applications. Starting in space applications, this material is today well established in friction applications, where lightweight high-performance brakes securely decelerate e.g. luxury cars or elevators. The high production costs still limit the broad application like as brake discs in standard passenger cars, although less weight, better performance and longer lifetime. The industrial used production process is the liquid silicon infiltration (LSI) with it three steps: green body shaping, pyrolysis and silicon infiltration. In this work, the shaping process of the carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) green body, is done by thermoset injection moulding. The application of plastic production processes like compounding and injection moulding in the liquid silicon infiltration process route, enables large-scale manufacturing. However, the screws and high shear forces inside the plastic processing machines significantly shorten the fibres. This paper describes the pros and cons of thermoset injection moulding in the LSI route, as well as the development and effect of different reinforcement types in dependence of their fibre length, since several energy dissipation mechanisms bases on a minimum length of reinforcement fibres in CMC. Various raw materials like short and chopped fibres with different length, rovings, and different approaches to receive longer fibres and their outcomes are presented. The mechanical properties show promising values and the micrographs display the infiltration status and crack development inside the specimen.

The production of C/C-SiC composites comprises a three-stage process: forming (CFRP-composite), pyrolysis (C/C-composite) and liquid silicon infiltration (C/C-SiC). A new promising approach for the manufacturing of CFRP intermediate composites is the injection moulding of customised granulates (novolac resin, hardener, processing additives and short carbon fibre) produced by compounding technique. To date, a direct dosing of short carbon fibre into the compounder was technically not realisable due to fibre separation and electrostatic charging in the hopper. A possible substitute solution has been the direct feeding of a carbon fibre bundle from a roving into the compounder. However, this is associated with a severe damage of the fibres and an inaccurate adjustment of the fibres content. In the present article, new chopped carbon fibres provided with an adapted sizing to be directly dosed into the compounder are used. The fibres possess a predefined length of 3 and 6 mm and their content amounts to 50 and 58 wt.%. The influence of the initial fibre length and fibre content on the physical and mechanical properties of the resulting CFRP-, C/C-and C/C-SiC-composites is presented and discussed. In addition, the impact of fibre feeding procedure at the compounding stage on the microstructure is considered