Journal of Inorganic Materials

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Multitoughening of B4C Composite

TANG Jun; TAN Shouhong; CHEN Zhongming; JIANG Dongliang   

  1. Shanghai Institute of Ceramics; Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai 200050 China
  • Received:1996-04-03 Revised:1996-06-04 Published:1997-06-20 Online:1997-06-20

Abstract: B4C-35vol% TiB2 composite ceramics with various amounts of free carbon hot-pressed at 2070℃ were studied. The incorporation of particulate TiB2 into B4C raised the toughness from3.6MPa.m1/2 to 6.5MPa.m1/2. A further increase of composite toughness up to 7.6MPa.m1/2 wasobtAlNed upon the addition of free carbon. SEM and TEM investigation revealed that the improvement of the composite toughness resulted from the multitoughening of both the crack deflectionassociated with the incorporation of TiB2 particles and the produced microcrack nucleated due to the strong residual stress and weak interface caused by the presence 9of free carbon in the interface and propagated along B4C-TiB2 interfaces.

Key words: composite ceramics, crack deflection, microcrack, multitoughening