Mechanical, oxidation and ablation properties of C/(C-SiC)CVI-(ZrC-SiC)PIP composites

•C/C-SiC-ZrC composites with different CVI-derived C-SiC volume ratio were prepared.•The composites exhibited high strength due to CVI-derived C-SiC matrix.•The composite with C-SiC ratio of 0.91 showed better mechanical and oxidative property.•The composites showed different oxidation behavior and mechanism at different temperature.•The composites showed a good long-time ablation-resistive endurance at ∼2100 °C. A joint chemical vapor infiltration-precursor infiltration and pyrolysis (CVI-PIP) process was used to fabricate C/C-SiC-ZrC composites with different volume ratio of CVI-derived C-SiC. The composite with a C-SiC volume ratio of 0.91 has a higher tensile and flexural strength of 181.7 MPa and 352.8 MPa, respectively, and also exhibits a better anti-oxidation property at 800∼1400 °C for 30 h. After an oxyacetylene ablation for 600 s at ∼2100 °C, the composite with a C-SiC volume ratio of 0.12 possesses a better anti-ablation performance with a linear and mass ablation rates of 0.94 um × s−1 and 0.13 mg × cm-2×s−1, respectively.