The quasi brittle ceramics show a non linear mechanical behaviour resulting most of the time in a dissymetry between their tensile and compressive stress-strain laws. The characterization of their fracture strengths might be biased if elastic linear formulae are used to analyze classical tests like bending tests. Based on Digital Image Correlation (DIC), a methodology is proposed to characterize materials with dissymmetric behaviours. Applying specific DIC decomposition functions for bending, compressive and tensile tests, a stress-strain model and its damage law are identified for aluminium titanate, a damageable micro cracked ceramic. This identification method using DIC can obviously be applied to other quasi brittle materials.

The glass industry requires the use of innovative ceramics that enable for long lifetimes. At very high temperatures, one of the key parameters for ceramics is their creep resistance. The characterization of the creep behavior, usually assessed through flexural tests, can be complex when an asymmetry appears between tension and compression. To detect and quantify such asymmetrical behaviors, the use of Digital Image Correlation (DIC) is proposed. First, several challenges are to be tackled for DIC at high temperature, namely, the random pattern stability, the radiation filtering and the heat haze. They are exacerbated by the limited possibilities to heat ceramics, the nonuniform strain fields and their low levels. Beyond several experimental developments, the strain uncertainties are decreased thanks to the use of two global approaches of DIC based on ad hoc finite‐element kinematics. Last, the proposed methodology is applied to the analysis of asymmetric creep at 1350°C of an industrial zircon ceramic designed for its high creep resistance.