FRAGILIDAD

Roman Pampuch
1. The brittleness of materials manifests itself by brittle fracture, a fracture
of the material into two or more parts which is due to spontaneous
propagation of cracks of a given critical size. The propagation, once
initiated, occurs at a very rapid rate (25 kms1) at a low relative strain
c..
Carter, Norton
1. The reason that the majority of ceramics are brittle is the mixed
ioniccovalent bonding that holds the constituent atoms
together. At high temperatures (above the glass transition
temperature) glass no longer behaves in a brittle manner; it
behaves as a viscous liquid. That is why it is easy to form glass
into intricate shapes. So what we can say is that most ceramics
are brittle at room temperature but not necessarily at elevated
temperatures.

2. Ceramics are inherently brittle with low toughness. In 1975 Garvie,

Hannink, and Pascoe published a seminal article entitled Ceramic
Steel. They were the first to realize the potential of zirconia (ZrO2) for
increasing the strength and toughness of ceramics by utilizing the
tetragonal to monoclinic phase transformation induced by the presence
of a stress field ahead of a crack.
3. Griffith (A.A. Griffith, the Father of Fracture Mechanics.) showed the
importance of flaws, which act as stress concentrators. Because it is
almost impossible to make ceramics without flaws they often are the
dominant cause of failure.

4. Most ceramics are brittle at room temperature. That is they fracture with
very little plastic deformation.
5. To explain the discrepancy between theoretical strength predicted by Eq.
18.8 and experimental data A.A. Griffi th (1920) suggested that
preexisting flaws in the materials act to concentrate stress.
6. In Chapter 12 we already noted that dislocations do not move
easily in ceramics and this is the reason for their inherent
brittleness.
7. The reason is that dislocations in ceramics do not move as easily
as those in metals and they are usually not as numerous. So we

should be asking why the last sentence is true. Dislocations in

ceramics are extremely important because of what they do not
do: they do not glide easily. Si devices would not work for long
and ceramics, in general, would not be brittle if dislocations
could glide easily.
Barsoum
1. The usually strong covalent bonds holding semiconductors together
make their mechanical properties quite similar to those of ceramics (i.e.:
brittle and hard). Ionic compounds are also hard and brittle and are poor
electrical and thermal conductors.
2. Also implicit is that there were no energy-consuming mechanisms
occurring at the crack tip, such as dislocation movements; i.e.. the
failure was a pure brittle failure. It is important to note that this condition
is only satisfied for a small number of ionic and covalent ceramics, some
of which are listed in Table 4.4.
3. The point at which the break in slope occurs is known as the glass
transition temperature and denotes the temperature at which a glassforming liquid transforms from a rubbery, soft plastic state to a rigid,
brittle, glassy state.

4. For reasons that will become apparent shortly, the presence of flaws,
such as shown in Fig. 11.2, in brittle solids will greatly reduce the stress
at which they fail. Conversely, it is well established that extraordinary
strengths can be achieved if they are flaw-free. For example, a defectfree silica glass rod can be elastically deformed to stresses that exceed 5
GPa! Thus it may be concluded, correctly one might add, that certain
flaws within a material serve to promote fracture at stress levels that are
well below the ideal fracture stress.
5. To illustrate what is meant by flaw or notch sensitivity, consider the
schematic of what occurs at the base of an atomically sharp crack upon

the application of a load Fapp. For a crack-free sample (Fig. 11.3a), each
chain of atoms will carry its share of the load F/n, where n is the number
of chains, i.e., the applied stress aapp is said to be uniformly distributed.
6. The introduction of a surface crack results in a stress redistribution such
that the load that was supported by the severed bonds is now being
carried by only a few bonds at the crack tip (Fig. 11.3b). Said otherwise,
the presence of a flaw will locally amplify the applied stress at the crack
tip crtlp. As crapp is increased, <rtip increases accordingly and moves
up the stress versus interatomic distance curve, as shown in Fig. 11.3c.
As long as crtip < <rmax. The situation is stable and the flaw will not
propagate. However, if at any time <7tip exceeds crmax, the situation
becomes catastrophically unstable (not unlike the bursting of a dam).
Based on this simple picture, the reason why brittle fracture occurs
rapidly and without warning, with cracks propagating at velocities
approaching the speed of sound, should now be obvious. Furthermore, it
should also be obvious why ceramics are much stronger in compression
than in tension.

7. Theoretically, the situation for ionic solids is less straightforward, but

direct observations of crack tips in transmission electron microscopy
tend to support the notion that most covalent and ionic solids are truly
brittle at room temperature (see Fig. 11. l0c). Note that the roughly
order-of magnitude difference between the fracture toughness of metals
(20 to l00 MPa-m1/2) and ceramics is directly related to the lack of cracktip plasticity in the latter moving dislocations consumes quite a
bit of energy.

8. The situation is quite different at higher temperatures. Since

dislocation mobility is thermally activated, increasing the
temperature will tend to favor dislocation activity, as shown in
Fig. ll.l0d, which in turn increases the ductility of the material.

Thus the condition for brittleness can be restated as follows:

Solids are brittle when the energy barrier for dislocation motion
is large relative to the thermal energy kT available to the
system.
9. Given the large flow stresses required to move dislocations at
elevated temperatures in oxide single crystals (Fig. 11.11), it is
once again not surprising that ceramics are brittle at room
temperatures. Finally, note that dislocation activity is not the
only mechanism for crack blunting. At temperatures above the
glass transition temperature viscous flow is also very effective
in blunting cracks.
10.It is experimentally well established that the fracture toughness of a
polycrystalline ceramic is appreciably higher than that of single crystals
of the same composition. For example, KIc of single-crystal alumina is
about 2.2 MPa.m1/2, whereas that for polycrystalline alumina is closer to
4 MPa-ml / 2 . Similarly, the fracture toughness of glass is ^0.8 MPa-m1
2, whereas the fracture toughness of a glass-ceramic of the same
composition is closer to 2 MPa.m1/2. One of the reasons invoked to
explain this effect is crack deflection at the grain boundaries, a process
illustrated in Fig. 11.16a.
11.To summarize, fracture toughness is related to the work
required to extend a crack and is determined by the details of
the crack propagation process. Only for the fracture of the most
brittle solids is the fracture toughness simply related to surface energy.
The fracture toughness can be enhanced by increasing the energy
required to extend the crack. Crack bridging and martensitic
transformations are two mechanisms that have been shown to enhance
KIc.
12.Ceramics are brittle because they lack a mechanism to relieve
the stress buildup at the tips of notches and flaws. This makes
them notch-sensitive, and consequently their strength will depend on the
combination of applied stress and flaw size. The strength of ceramics can
be increased by either increasing the fracture toughness or decreasing
the flaw size. Processing introduces flaws in the material that are to be
avoided if high strengths are to be achieved. The flaws can be pores,
large grains in an otherwise fine matrix, and inclusions, among others.
Furthermore, since the strength of a ceramic component decreases with
increasing grain size, it follows that to obtain a high-strength ceramic, a
flaw-free, fine microstructure is desirable.
13.The brittle nature of ceramics together with the stochastic nature of
finding flaws of different sizes, shapes, and orientations relative to the
applied stress will invariably result in some scatter to their strength.