Pure tin oxide (SnO2) ceramics is well known for its bad sinterability, more precisely for the difficulty to densify without additives by conventional pressureless sintering. This is related to the ...fact that the sintering mechanisms in pure tin oxide ceramics are non-densifying (surface diffusion at low temperature and evaporation-condensation at high temperature). On the other hand, for the same reason, pure tin oxide ceramics is a very unusual model system that can be used to demonstrate the effects of microstructural changes on effective properties without the otherwise dominating effect of changes in porosity. In this paper we show that pure tin oxide ceramics uniaxially pressed at 50 MPa, pre-sintered at 500 °C and re-sintered at 1000, 1200 and 1400 °C exhibit relative Young’s modulus increases of 30, 70 and 120 % while the porosity remains essentially constant at a value of 51.6 ± 0.7 %.
The Young modulus of partially and fully sintered alumina ceramics, obtained by firing to different temperatures (range 1200–1600°C), has been determined via impulse excitation, and the evolution of ...Young’s modulus of partially sintered alumina with temperature has been monitored from room temperature to 1600°C. As expected, the room-temperature Young modulus of the partially sintered materials is lower than all theoretical predictions. With increasing temperature Young’s modulus decreases, until the original firing temperature is exceeded and sintering (densification) continues, resulting in a steep Young’s modulus increase. During heating and cooling the temperature dependence obeys a master curve for alumina, unless the temperature of the original firing is excessively low.
The elastic properties of silica phases are reviewed. Available monocrystal data for crystalline SiO2 polymorphs (low-quartz, high-quartz, low-cristobalite, high-cristobalite, stishovite) are ...collected from the literature, and effective elastic constants (Young's moduli, shear moduli, bulk moduli and Poisson ratios) are calculated from these using Voigt-Reuss-Hill averaging. Both experimental data and simulation results are taken into account. A table of room temperature elastic constants for crystalline silica polymorphs and silica glass that lists the recommended current "state-of-the-art" values is given. All data are consistent with the well-known auxetic behaviour of cristobalite at room temperature, and high-temperature simulation data published for cristobalite confirm auxetic behaviour for all temperatures from RT up to more than 1500 C. The calculations also show that quartz can be auxetic, but only in a very limited temperature range around the low-to-high-quartz transition temperature (420-577 C). Experimental measurements of elastic properties of tridymite and cristobalite, including high-temperature measurements, are identified as a desideratum of future research.
Young’s modulus and damping of partially sintered and almost fully dense zirconia ceramics (tetragonal zirconia polycrystals with 3 mol.% yttria), obtained by firing to different temperatures (range ...1000–1400°C), have been determined via impulse excitation, and the evolution of Young’s modulus and damping of partially sintered zirconia with temperature has been monitored from room temperature to 1400°C and back to room temperature. The room-temperature Young’s modulus of the partially sintered materials obeys the Pabst-Gregorová exponential prediction, which is relatively unusual for partially sintered materials. With increasing temperature Young’s modulus decreases, until the original firing temperature is exceeded and sintering (densification) continues, resulting in a steep Young’s modulus increase. During heating and cooling the temperature dependence obeys a master curve with a typical inflection point at approximately 200 °C, the temperature where damping (internal friction) exhibits a maximum. The reasons for this characteristic behavior of doped zirconia are recalled.
Ceramics from the magnesia-alumina-silica (MAS) system are common products of the ceramic industry. The phase composition of these systems can be rather complex, especially when feldspar is added as ...a flux, and thus attempts to correlate the composition and structure of these ceramics to their properties are quite rare, especially when considerable amounts of glass phase and sapphirine appear after firing. In this paper an attempt is made to correlate, for a talc-kaolin-alumina-feldspar mixture resulting in cordierite-sapphirine ceramics after firing to 1250 °C, the resulting elastic properties (Young’s modulus), as determined via the impulse excitation technique (IET), with the phase composition, determined via X-ray diffraction (XRD). Moreover, it is shown how the evolution of the phase composition and microstructure is reflected in the temperature dependence of Young’s modulus and damping during heating-cooling cycles with maximum temperatures ranging from 1000 to 1250 °C.
Numerical calculations of relative Young’s modulus and thermal conductivity have been performed on computer-generated microstructures of wall-based (closed-cell) and strut-based (open-cell) cellular ...materials (foams) and inverse foams. The results are compared to rigorous upper bounds (Wiener-Paul, Hashin-Shtrikman), model-based predictions (power-law, exponential) and cross-property predictions (CPRs). It is shown that closed-cell foams exhibit higher property values than open-cell and inverse foams, Kelvin foams higher than random foams, and the difference between closed-cell and open-cell foams is larger than that between Kelvin and random foams. While the properties of closed-cell foams are higher than the power-law prediction, those of inverse and open-cell random foams are between the exponential and power-law predictions, and open-cell Kelvin foams follow the Gibson-Ashby power-law prediction for open-cell foams. The Pabst-Gregorová CPR is shown to predict Young’s modulus with accuracy better than ±0.02 relative property units (better than any model-based relation and any other CPR).
The elastic moduli (Young's moduli) of alumina and zirconia ceramics with porosities ranging from almost dense (2–3%) to highly porous (46–52%), the latter prepared with starch as a pore-forming ...agent, have been measured via impulse excitation and four-point bending tests from room temperature up to more than 1200°C. It is shown that, independent of the temperature and the material, the porosity dependence of the Young's modulus is well predicted by our exponential relation and that, irrespective of porosity, the temperature dependence follows a master curve that is characteristic of the material (for alumina exhibiting a decrease with a gradually growing tangent slope and for zirconia exhibiting a steep decrease with an inflection point at moderately elevated temperatures below 400°C). Differences between isothermal (static) and adiabatic (dynamic) values are negligible as long as the materials are purely elastic (i.e. at temperatures below approximately 1000°C).
Stereological relations that can be routinely applied for the quantitative characterization of microstructures of heterogeneous single- and two-phase materials via global microstructural descriptors ...are reviewed. It is shown that in the case of dense, single-phase polycrystalline materials (e.g., transparent yttrium aluminum garnet ceramics) two quantities have to be determined, the interface density (or, equivalently, the mean chord length of the grains) and the mean curvature integral density (or, equivalently, the Jeffries grain size), while for two-phase materials (e.g., highly porous, cellular alumina ceramics), one additional quantity, the volume fraction (porosity), is required. The Delesse–Rosiwal law is recalled and size measures are discussed. It is shown that the Jeffries grain size is based on the triple junction line length density, while the mean chord length of grains is based on the interface density (grain boundary area density). In contrast to widespread belief, however, these two size measures are not alternative, but independent (and thus complementary), measures of grain size. Concomitant with this fact, a clear distinction between linear and planar grain size numbers is proposed. Finally, based on our concept of phase-specific quantities, it is shown that under certain conditions it is possible to define a Jeffries size also for two-phase materials and that the ratio of the mean chord length and the Jeffries size has to be considered as an invariant number for a certain type of microstructure, i.e., a characteristic value that is independent of the absolute size of the microstructural features (e.g., grains, inclusions or pores).
•Stereology-based image analysis is reviewed, including error considerations.•Recipes are provided for measuring global metric microstructural descriptors.•Size measures are based on interface density and mean curvature integral density.•Phase-specific quantities and a generalized Jeffries size are introduced.•Linear and planar grain size numbers are clearly distinguished and explained.
The effective Young’s modulus and thermal conductivity of porous materials can be rigorously bounded from above via micromechanical bounds (upper Wiener–Paul bounds and upper Hashin–Shtrikman ...bounds), and several model relations are commonly used as tentative approximate predictions (Maxwell-type, Coble–Kingery-type, power-law and exponential relations). Based on numerical calculations on computer-generated digital model microstructures, both periodic and random, it is shown that these model relations provide rough approximations that are more or less appropriate for microstructures with essentially convex pores, but are not suitable for microstructures with concave pores. On the other hand, the Pabst–Gregorová cross-property relation provides a very accurate (better than 0.04 relative property units) analytical prediction for the relative Young’s modulus of isotropic porous materials with isometric pores, both convex and concave, when the relative thermal conductivity is known. It is shown that this cross-property relation is the best prediction currently available for isotropic porous materials with isometric pores.
