Glass plates are used in architecture, interior design, and other applications. For testing strength of plane plates, the ring on ring (RoR) test is well established. Curved plates are increasingly used, e.g. for curved mirror elements for solar power plants. Due to the non-planarity the RoR test cannot be applied. Therefore a variant of the ball on three balls (B3B) test is developed. The support is made up of three balls and the load is applied by a fourth ball. This arrangement results in a stable three-point support, even if the plate is not plane but curved.Plane plates of borosilicate glass were tested with the RoR and with the B3B test. The differences in the measured strength data can be explained with the Weibullian size effect of strength. Finally the B3B test has been used to test concave and convex curved plates resulting in consistent strength values.

Abstract Failure investigations are mainly conducted for the purpose of clarifying the root causes for component failure. Possible aims of these investigations are to analyze the unexpected failure of a component during operation, to improve the material and to assess the quality of a product. Usually, ceramics can be used in similar ways as other structural materials. There are particularities, however, which need to be considered in failure analysis of ceramic components. This paper will therefore give a brief overview of the types of damage which may occur in ceramic materials, with the focus being on failures occurring at room temperature and medium temperatures (e. g., brittle fracture, contact stresses or stresses caused by rapid temperature changes).

The goal of this research is to fabricate pure transparent yttria ceramics through gel casting and vacuum sintering. A specific processing method has been used and optimized for this purpose. A pure yttria nanopowder was synthesized as the starting material to produce pure transparent ceramics through a low-temperature sintering process. It was attempted to minimize the undesirable nanopowder hydration by using the as-synthesized yttria nanopowder and a rapid deagglomeration and slurry preparation process. The synthesized nanopowders were deagglomerated to enhance the efficiency of both powder shaping and sintering stages. Carrageenan was used as the gelling agent because it is a low-cost and abundant material, and because the temperature is the only catalyst needed for its gelation; therefore, it is possible to control its gelation to obtain high-density and pure optical ceramics. The effect of the deagglomeration method and the processing parameters, including the amounts of dispersant, gelling agent, solid loading, pH, and deagglomeration time, on the rheology of slurry, density, and microstructure of the obtained green yttria ceramics was examined and optimized in order to obtain high solid loading nanoyttria suspensions of 38 vol%, which is more than those obtained in many of the previous investigations. The precise gelling temperature and time were measured, and green gel cast ceramics with a density of 63 % of the theoretical density were produced. A rapid deagglomeration and slurry preparation method was used instead of using a conventional planetary ball-milling approach to minimize the risk of the hydrolysis of yttria nanopowder. No sintering aid was necessary, and transparent yttria ceramics with 99 % of the theoretical density were produced after vacuum-furnace sintering at 10-2 mbar and 1715 °C.

Owing to its excellent mechanical and thermal properties such as high strength, high hardness, and good thermal shock resistance, silicon nitride is a material suitable for forming tools. This work analyses the failure of a compaction roll made of Si3N4. One of the two ceramic rings broke during the compaction rolls' operation. Fractographic examinations have shown that very high tensile stresses occurred in the ceramic material during operation. These stresses first led to the formation of cracks and then to the total failure of the roll ring. Failure analysis has shown that roll design and clamping are of major importance. Causes for the generation of tensile stresses are shown and suggestions are made on how to ensure a safe operation of the rolls.

This study examines ceramic varistors made from zinc oxide whose electrical resistance drops by many orders of magnitude within a few nanoseconds when a critical voltage threshold is exceeded. These unusual properties are caused by charges which are build into grain boundaries or accumulate near the grain boundaries. Zinc oxide crystals are polar and piezoelectric. Therefore, the charges in the grain boundary area and thus the electrical properties of the varistor depend on the orientation of the crystals towards the grain boundaries and on the mechanical tensions in the individual crystals. In this study, the microstructures of ZnO varistors, particularly the size and distribution of the grains and their orientation towards the grain boundaries will be examined. Among other things, lock-in thermography with a target preparation of strongly active grain boundaries and EBSD analyses in combination with SEM examinations, ion-etching and wet-chemical etching for the determination of crystal orientations are used. For selected grain boundaries, the electrical resistance in dependence of the applied voltage is determined via Micro-4 pole measurements.

A new method for fracture toughness determination of ceramic balls is presented. The starter crack is introduced into the surface of the ball by a Knoop indentation followed by grinding off the deformed zone. The loading through surface tensile stresses is realized by water quenching, i.e. dropping the heated ball into water. The temperature difference is stepwise increased to find the critical temperature difference for the initiation of crack growth. The geometric factor is calculated in a parametric finite element study, whereas the temperature distribution in the ball was previously determined by using the Biot concept. Combining experimentally measured critical temperature differences for different cracksizes and ball diameters with numerical results of the geometric factor, the fracture toughness of the silicon nitride balls is evaluated. For the evaluation, the knowledge of several material properties (e.g. the CTE) and other parameters is necessary, which have influence on the precision of the measurement. The overall measurement uncertainty is estimated to be about ±10 %, what roughly corresponds to the value determined with standard measurement procedures. There is an excellent agreement with published fracture toughness results of these balls determined by the modified Surface Crack in Flexure procedure.

Objective. Strength is one of the preferred parameters used in dentistry for determining clinical indication of dental restoratives. However, small dimensions of CAD/CAM blocks limit reliable measurements with standardized uniaxial bending tests. The objective of this study was to introduce the ball-on-three-ball (B3B) biaxial strength test for dental for small CAD/CAM block in the context of the size effect on strength predicted by the Weibull theory.Methods. Eight representative chairside CAD/CAM materials ranging from polycrystalline zirconia (e.max ZirCAD, Ivoclar-Vivadent), reinforced glasses (Vitablocs Mark II, VITA; Empress CAD, Ivoclar-Vivadent) and glass-ceramics (e.max CAD, Ivoclar-Vivadent; Suprinity, VITA; Celtra Duo, Dentsply) to hybrid materials (Enamic, VITA; Lava Ultimate, 3M ESPE) have been selected. Specimens were prepared with highly polished surfaces in rectangular plate (12 x 12 x 1.2 mm(3)) or round disc (empty set = 12 mm, thickness = 1.2 mm) geometries. Specimens were tested using the B3B assembly and the biaxial strength was determined using calculations derived from finite element analyses of the respective stress fields. Size effects on strength were determined based on results from 4-point-bending specimens.Results. A good agreement was found between the biaxial strength results for the different geometries (plates vs. discs) using the B3B test. Strength values ranged from 110.9 MPa (Vitablocs Mark II) to 1303.21 MPa (e.max ZirCAD). The strength dependency on specimen size was demonstrated through the calculated effective volume/surface.Significance. The B3B test has shown to be a reliable and simple method for determining the biaxial strength restorative materials supplied as small CAD/CAM blocks. A flexible solution was made available for the B3B test in the rectangular plate geometry. (C) 2016 The Academy of Dental Materials. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A relatively new method to manufacture complex ceramic prototypes and components is additive manufacturing (AM). With the LCM (Lithography-based Ceramic Manufacturing)-technology the green body is manufactured layer-by-layer using selective curing of light-sensitive ceramic slurry by a mask exposure process. After curing by blue light the component is removed from the building platform and the green body is sintered to a ceramic component.The aim of this work is to investigate the influence of processing and layer architecture on the mechanical properties of an Yttria-stabilized zirconia ceramic. Strength tests were performed by uniaxial bending tests and by biaxial Ball-on-three Balls (B3B) tests. To identify typical fracture initiating flaws a systematic fractographic investigation was performed on different batches of Ball-on-three Balls-test and bending test specimens, respectively.Through additional investigations it was found that hardness and fracture toughness were independent on the layer architecture. But an extensive fractographic analysis showed that the strength was limited by flaws, which were introduced by processing and handling. If these flaws can be avoided by optimisation of the process the strength should be equal to that of conventional processed ceramics. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In high performance hybrid bearings the balls are conventionally made of silicon nitride ceramics. There are some disadvantages such as costs or the higher stiffness of silicon nitride compared to steel. Therefore, alternative materials are under investigation. The surface strength is one of the most important criteria for the qualification of the spherical components in the application. It has to be evaluated for each new material (or new surface finish).

This paper reviews current activities at the Montanuniversität Leoben on the hierarchical design of flaw‐tolerant brittle materials in the fields of layered ceramics, hard coatings, fibre reinforced laminates, and biomimetic functional systems. Different examples of reinforcement mechanisms are presented acting at different length scales. Novel strategies are analyzed that make use of tailored residual stresses, textured microstructures, compositional heterogeneity and spatial variations in properties, fiber arrangement and laminate stacking, or functionalization of hierarchical materials from brittle constituents. Potential implications of hierarchical structures combining different materials science approaches for future engineering designs are discussed.

The strength of Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramics (LTCC) can be affected by the environmental conditions under which the material is loaded. In this work, the strength degradation associated with Subcritical Crack Growth (SCCG) mechanisms is investigated in several multilayer LTCC architectures designed with surface compressive residual stresses. The magnitude of the residual stresses was tailored combining two different LTCC materials. Biaxial strength measurements using the ball-on-three-balls method performed at room temperature in water (as reference environment) showed a clear increase in the characteristic strength with the compressive residual stress in the surface layer. The strength distribution in dependence of the surface stresses in the outer layer can be represented by a three-parameter Weibull distribution, thus providing a “threshold strength” (i.e. minimum strength) for the material. In addition, the use of compressive stresses in LTCCs introduces a threshold intensity factor for the SCCG behaviour, below which no environmental assisted cracking can occur.