Ultrafine Grain Ceramics

The Army Materials and Mechanics Research Center has conducted the Saga more Army Materials Research Conferences, in cooperation with the Metallurgi cal Research Laboratories of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Metallurgy of Syracuse University, since 1954. The purpose of the conferences has been to gather together scientists and engineers from academic institutions, industry, and government who are uniquely qualified to explore in depth a sub ject of importance to the Army, the Department of Defense and the scientific community. Grain size and its control is a major factor governing the behavior of materi als. Knowledge that one can obtain grain sizes in the 10 micron down to sub micron range has established the basis for a new technology. This volume, Ultrafine-Grain Ceramics, addresses itself to the broad areas of: realization of fine-grain ceramics; preparation of ultrafine particle size materials; characterization of ultrafine particles and ultrafine-grain ceramics; processing and behavior of ultra fine-grain ceramics. The technical advice provided by Dr. S. K. Dutta of the Army Materials and Mechanics Research Center during the editing of this book is acknowledged. The continued active interest and support of these conferences by Dr. E. Scala, Director, Lt. Col. Joseph B. Mason, Commanding Officer, and J. F. Sullivan, Deputy Technical Director, of the Army Materials and Mechanics Re search Center is appreciated.

Nanocrystalline materials are three-dimensional ultrafine, polycrystalline microstructures. They give rise to interesting and useful chemical and physical-size effects. This book describes the development of a method of synthesizing chemical vapor for the production of nanocrystalline ceramic powders. The development of the microstructure during sintering is studied and the influence of the synthesis parameters on the structure and properties of the nanocrystalline ceramics from the atomic to the microstructural level is investigated. The emerging unified view, from powder synthesis and ceramic processing to structural characterization and determination of properties, provides a detailed understanding of the materials and enables better quality control of the end products.

Selected papers presented at the International Workshop on Fine Ceramics 92, Materials Processing and Design through Better Control of Grain Boundaries: Emphasizing Fine Ceramics, held in Nagoya, Japan, 12-13 March 1992.

Volume is indexed by Thomson Reuters CPCI-S (WoS). This special volume presents, discusses and reviews the latest advances in the science and technology of high-performance ceramics. The editors received more than 700 contributions from which, following a strict peer-review process, more than 598 manuscripts were chosen for inclusion in this collection.

This book discusses the mechanical properties of ceramics and aims to provide both a solid background for undergraduate students, as well as serving as a text to bring practicing engineers up to date with the latest developments in this topic so they can use and apply these to their actual engineering work. Generally, ceramics are made by moistening a mixture of clays, casting it into desired shapes and then firing it to a high temperature, a process known as 'vitrification'. The relatively late development of metallurgy was contingent on the availability of ceramics and the know-how to mold them into the appropriate forms. Because of the characteristics of ceramics, they offer great advantages over metals in specific applications in which hardness, wear resistance and chemical stability at high temperatures are essential. Clearly, modern ceramics manufacturing has come a long way from the early clay-processing fabrication method, and the last two decades have seen the development of sophisticated techniques to produce a large variety of ceramic material. The chapters of this volume are ordered to help students with their laboratory experiments and guide their observations in parallel with lectures based on the current text. Thus, the first chapter is devoted to mechanical testing. A chapter of ductile and superplastic ceramic is added to emphasize their role in modern ceramics (chapter 2). These are followed by the theoretical basis of the subject. Various aspects of the mechanical properties are discussed in the following chapters, among them, strengthening mechanisms, time dependent and cyclic deformation of ceramics. Many practical illustrations are provided representing various observations encountered in actual ceramic-structures of particularly technical significance. A comprehensive list of references at the end of each chapter is included in this textbook to provide a broad basis for further studying the subject. The work also contains a unique chapter on a topic not discussed in other textbooks on ceramics concerning nanosized ceramics. This work will also be useful as a reference for materials scientists, not only to those who specialize in ceramics.