Abstract
Thermal waves are used to image damage accumulation digitally beneath Hertzian contacts in ceramics. Alumina ceramics over a range of grain size 3–48 μm are used in a case study. The nature of the images changes with increasing alumina grain size, reflecting a transition in damage mode from well-defined cone fracture in the finer-grain materials to distributed subsurface microfracture in the coarser-grain materials. Quantitative determinations of microcrack densities are evaluated in the latter case by deconvoluting thermal diffusivities from the image data. These determinations confirm the grain-size dependence of degree of damage predicted by fracture mechanics models. Potential advantages and disadvantages of thermal waves as a route to damage characterization in ceramic systems are discussed.
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Wei, L., Lawn, B.R. Thermal wave analysis of contact damage in ceramics: Case study on alumina. Journal of Materials Research 11, 939–947 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1557/JMR.1996.0118
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/JMR.1996.0118