PSI - Issue 35

V.A. Zimina et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 35 (2022) 188–195 V.A. Zimina, I.Yu. Smolin / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2021) 000–000

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3.2. The influence of the fraction of SiC inclusions on the elastic properties of Al 2 O 3 –ZrB 2 –SiC composite It is common knowledge that the strength and elastic properties of composite materials depend on their internal structure. In this connection, the influence of the fraction of SiC inclusions on the effective elastic properties of the three-phase composite material Al 2 O 3 –ZrB 2 –SiC was studied in this paper. The structure of ceramic composite depicted in Fig. 1 was taken as a basis in which the amount of fraction of SiC inclusions was altered. The volume fraction of SiC varied from 0 to 34 %. For each considered value of SiC volume fraction, RVE models were built. As an example, the RVEs of a ceramic composite material with different volume content of SiC inclusions are presented in Fig. 4. Here, the white color corresponds to aluminum oxide, the cyan color fits zirconium diboride, the grey color corresponds to silicon carbide and the dark blue color fits the pores. The estimation of the effective properties of the composite was performed on the basis of the analysis of the results of numerical simulation of the uniaxial tension of the RVE. The dependencies of the effective Young’s modulus ( E ), bulk modulus ( K ), shear modulus ( G ), and Poisson's ratio (ν) on the volume fraction of SiC inclusions are shown in Fig. 5.

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(b)

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Fig. 4. RVEs of the three-phase composite material with different volume fraction of SiC inclusions: (a) 0 %, (b) 4 %, (c) 20 %.

Fig. 5. The dependencies of elastic moduli on the volume fraction of SiC in Al 2 O 3 –ZrB 2 –SiC composites.

From the curves, it can be seen that the change of SiC volume fraction from 0 to 34 % has an insignificant influence on the elastic properties of the composite. Thus, Young’s modulus, bulk and shear moduli decrease with