Early stage cavitation erosion within ceramics—An experimental investigation

Abstract

Four material types were considered within an experimental investigation to identify the failure mechanism resulting from cavitation exposure. These materials were zirconia, silicon nitride and alumina with stainless steel as reference. An ultrasonic transducer was utilised to produce cavitation conditions and the configuration was "static specimen method" using a 5mm diameter probe, 20kHz and 50µm of amplitude. The exposure times were periods from 15 seconds to 2 hours.Experimental methods employed to characterise wear mechanisms were light microscopy, scanning light interferometry, scanning electronic microscopy.It was found that zirconia and silicon nitride demonstrated evidence of plastic deformation. Zirconia showed evidence of time delayed for transformation of phase. Alumina showed evidence of fracture type failure mechanism with negligible plastic deformation. All wear mechanisms are discussed and the materials are ranked in terms of cavitation resistance performance.

Cavitation resistance of refractory concrete: Influence of sintering temperature

“…Porosity decreased from 2.83% at the room temperature (20 • C) to 0.71% after sintering at 1600 • C. According to the literature, it is evident that microstructure has strong influence on the material behaviour exposed to the cavitation. [8][9][10][32][33][34] Namely, material with fine grain-sized structure without pores and defects shows long incubation period and good cavitation resistance while the nonhomogenous microstructure with defects, pores, vacancies, and surface defects affects decrease of cavitation resistance. Both parameters should be considered in the behavioural analysis of the material during the cavitation testing.…”

“…Apparently, the influence of individual properties was analyzed here, but in case of general analysis total influence of all parameters should be taken into consideration. [8][9][10]15,16,[31][32][33][34] Namely, as it is already mentioned, the degree of degradation inside the sample (defects, pores, micropores, and cavities) was taken as the level of material porosity and determined by image analysis. Based on the obtained results, it is obvious that the porosity had tendency of continuous decrease with increasing the treating temperature.…”

Erosion evolution in mono-crystalline silicon surfaces caused by acoustic cavitation bubbles

“…Studies of cavitation erosion have covered a wide variety of materials and conditions, from ductile metals, brittle plastics, ceramics, and soluble materials to glass. 11,39,[46][47][48] All materials have intrinsic defects in its surface and bulk. When exposed to cavitation activity, regularly an incubation period occurs where small deformations (erosion pits) appear on the surface after short duration exposure, or the existing defects start to grow.…”

Erosive wear resistance of silicon carbide-cordierite ceramics: influence of the cordierite content

“…The experimental methodology used for the cavitation-erosion testing is explained in 7,10,16,17 . With respect to the used equipment, the diameter of the horn was 10 mm and the distance between the horn and a sample was 1 mm.…”

“…Research results concerning the applications of different classes of materials, including ceramics and composite materials for a similar use, were published in the last decade. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Different types of ceramics based on silicon nitride and zirconia, as well as alumina-based ceramic materials were investigated in the conditions of cavitation erosion. 2,[4][5][6][7][8][9] In numerous papers [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] related to the investigations of the erosion rate of these materials, attempts were made to investigate the type of cracking as well as the influence of the grain sizes and the contents of different compounds and phases on the resistance of the materials to the erosive wear.…”