Dynamic Grain Growth in Superplastic Y-TZP and Al2O3/YTZ

Abstract

ABSTRACTBoth static and dynamic grain growth have been studied during superplastic deformation of fine-grained yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia (Y-TZP) and alumina reinforced yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia (Al2O3/YTZ). Grain growth was observed in both materials at temperatures above 1350° C. In the case of Y-TZP, both static and dynamic grain growth were found to obey a similar equation of the form: where D is the instantaneous grain size, Do is the initial grain size, t is the time, and k is a kinetic constant which depends primarily on temperature and grain boundary energy. The activation energies for Y-TZP were approximately 580 and 520 kJ/mol, for static and dynamic grain growth, respectively. In the case of Al2O3/YTZ, it was found that the grain growth rate for the Al2O3 phase was slower than that for the ZrO2 phase. The growth rate of the ZrO2 phase in Al2O3/YTZ is, however, similar to that in monolithic ZrO2, i.e., Y-TZP.