Journal of Inorganic Materials

• Research Paper • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Y-α/β-Sialon Ceramics and Its Fatigue Behavior

WU Fengying; ZHAN Guodong; ZHUANG Hanrui; LAI Tingrong   

  1. Shanyhai Institute of Ceramics; Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai 200050 China
  • Received:1996-06-25 Revised:1996-08-22 Published:1997-08-20 Online:1997-08-20

Abstract: The investigations were mainly focused on the phase composition, microstructure and fatigue behavior of fully-dense Y-α/β-Sialon
ceramics prepared from powder mixtures of Si3N4, AlN and Y2O3 by using gas pressure sintering technique.

The results obtained show that the typical microstructure of mixed Y-α/β-Sialon ceramics consists of needle-like grains of the β-phase and equi-axed α-Sialon grains
with a small amount of glassy phase and J-Y4Si2O7N2[102] crystalline phase on grain boundaries.

The cyclic fatigue crack growth behavior from microindentation flaws was investiated with gas pressure sintered Y-α/β-Sialon ceramics, A V-shape behavior was observed in the relation between the maximum applied stress intensity factor and crack
growth rates which are sensitive to the level of applied stresses.

Key words: Sialon, GPS, microstructure, vickers indentation, cyclic fatigue crack growth