Hard, brittle, heat-resistant materials with ionic or covalent bonds.
Ceramics are inorganic non-metals (oxides, carbides, nitrides) with high hardness, stiffness, melting points and chemical resistance, but low toughness and tensile strength from flaw sensitivity. Strength follows Weibull statistics and is governed by the largest flaw.
Ceramic tiles resist heat and wear but crack on impact.
Ceramics resist heat and corrosion and are very hard, which makes them valuable for cutting tools, insulators and furnace parts.
Hard, brittle, heat-resistant materials with ionic or covalent bonds.
Ceramics resist heat and corrosion and are very hard, which makes them valuable for cutting tools, insulators and furnace parts.
Strong ionic and covalent bonds resist plastic deformation, so cracks cannot blunt easily and they fail suddenly.
Transformation toughening, fibre reinforcement and careful processing reduce flaw size and improve toughness.
Typical applications include using alumina as an electrical insulator for a spark plug, choosing a ceramic cutting insert for high-speed machining and lining a furnace with refractory bricks.
Study "Wear and tribology" first (topic 33 of 100 in Materials & Chemical). It covers the groundwork this topic builds on.
Griffith criterion. Compressive strength much higher. Thermal shock.
Ceramic tiles resist heat and wear but crack on impact.
The next topic is "Glass", which builds directly on this one.
It is classed as Beginner in Materials & Chemical (topic 34 of 100). It is an entry-level topic. It relies only on basic school mathematics and the ideas introduced earlier in this discipline.
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