Study on the ablation behavior of C/SiC composite materials under the action of local structural thermal sources

•Local structural heat sources with different heat flux densities are used to simulate local extreme environments at discontinuities in spacecrafts.•The thermal response, ablation law, and multi-scale ablation morphology of typical thermal protection materials (C/SiC) under the action of local heat sources are analyzed.•Improve the ablation retreat program (Umeshmotion+ALE) in the ABAQUS software so that C/SiC composite materials with large ablation amount until material perforation can be simulated numerically.