Nonwoven preforms made with increased areal weight fabric segments for aircraft friction materials

A method of making a carbon-carbon composite brake disc or pad, which method comprises the steps of:

• providing a fibrous nonwoven fabric segment comprised of oxidized polyacrylonitrile fibers, wherein said segment is produced from a fabric which has a high basis weight, wherein said high basis weight is in the range from 1250 grams per square meter to 3000 grams per square meter;
• providing a needler capable of needling layers of said high basis weight fibrous fabric segments to one another;
• needling two layers of said high basis weight fibrous fabric segments to one another and then needling sequential layers of said high basis weight fibrous fabric segments on top of the layers thereof which have previously been needled together, thereby combining the high basis weight fibrous fabric segment layers into a brake disc or pad preform;
• continuing the preceding step until the preform composed of needled fabric segment layers reaches a thickness suitable for manufacturing a brake disc or pad therefrom;
• carbonizing the fibrous preform to obtain a carbon-carbon preform;
• and
• infiltrating the resulting carbonized needled fibrous fabric preform via CVD/CVI processing in order to produce a carbon-carbon composite brake disc or pad which has a density of at least 1.70 grams per cubic centimeter.