Patent ID: 6942893

Claim:
A method of densifying hollow bowl-shaped porous substrates by chemical vapor infiltration, the substrates each having an inside volume defined by a concave inside face and having an opposite convex outside face, the method comprising the steps of: placing at least one hollow substrate to be densified in an enclosure; admitting a reactive gas into the enclosure through a gas inlet opening into the enclosure at one end thereof; causing the gas to flow through the enclosure between said reactive gas inlet and an effluent gas outlet at another end of the enclosure; dividing at least a portion of the reactive gas flow entering the enclosure into first and second non-zero fractions, wherein the first fraction of the reactive gas flow is fed to the inside face of the at least one substrate and the second fraction of the reactive gas flow is fed to only the outside face of the at least one substrate; and guiding the first fraction of the reactive gas flow feeding the inside face of the at least one substrate by means of a tooling directing the gas into the inside volume of the substrate so that the concave inside face of the substrate is swept in full by the first fraction of the total reactive gas flow admitted into the enclosure.