Bending and Contact Strength of a Ceramic Nanocomposite

Abstract

The paper deals with the determination of the characteristic strength and as well as the Weibull moduli and of the Si3N4+SiC micro/nanocomposite determined by the four-point bending test and the contact test using opposite spheres both applied to specimens of different size, respectively. Material failure in the bending and contact modes is caused by the presence of processing defects as fracture origins, and by the formation of cone cracks, respectively, where a stable growth of the cone cracks initiated during contact loading is assumed to be a reason of , . A microstructural analysis of the processing flaws, and a mathematical analysis of the propagation of the cone cracks regarding different dimensions of a specimen are also presented.