Crack propagation and fracture in silicon carbide

Abstract

Fracture mechanics and strength studies performed on two silicon carbides — a hot-pressed material (with alumina) and a sintered material (with boron) — have shown that both materials exhibit slow crack growth at room temperature in water, but only the hotpressed material exhibits significant high temperature slow crack growth (1000 to 1400‡ C). A good correlation of the observed fracture behaviour with the crack growth predicted from the fracture mechanics parameters shows that effective failure predictions for this material can be achieved using macro-fracture mechanics data.