• Akbarzadeh, A. H.
• Ashrafi, B.
• Fatehi, E.
• Sarvestani, H. Yazdani

Abstract

<p>Ceramic materials are excellent candidates for harsh environment applications (e.g., high temperature applications). However, ceramics often suffer from brittle failure, which limit their applications where a potential for mechanical or thermal shocks may exist (e.g. in space applications). Modification of existing ceramic materials based on bioinspired approaches is considered as a solution to address the brittleness of ceramics. Many natural materials demonstrate a ductile behaviour while mainly composed of brittle mineral building blocks. These brittle blocks, often arranged in well-defined architectures, offer high stiffness and strength while weak interfaces between these blocks often provide toughness. In this study, inspired by natural materials, a simple, yet scalable procedure, based on laser-engraving and assembly is employed to fabricate architectured ceramic panels with enhanced toughness behaviour. These panels are subjected to impact loading tests. It is found that the architectured panels demonstrate more energy absorption compared to plain ceramic panels. This comes at an expense of a decrease in stiffness and strength. The results reveal that the improved performance is rooted in relative sliding of neighbouring tiles which in turn results in frictional energy dissipation, a mechanism which is absent in plain ceramics. Motivated by architectured ceramics tested at an ambient temperature, a finite element analysis code, ANSYS Workbench, is used to model thermal shock of 1-layer architectured ceramics to better understand their behaviour under sudden temperature changes, a phenomenon which frequently occurs in space applications of ceramic panels. The results suggest that the hexagonal architectured ceramics with 10 mm hexagonal blocks absorb more energy and deform less under thermal shocks in comparison to the baseline and other architectures with different building blocks.</p>

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• mineral
• laser emission spectroscopy
• strength
• composite
• ceramic
• finite element analysis