Fractography of Ceramics

• Most ceramics (at

45
room temperature) 180
fracture without
any appreciable
deformation.
Impact or point loading Bending
• Typical crack
configurations for
4 common loading
methods. 90
15

Torsion Internal pressure

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• Surface of a 6-mm
diameter fused silica
rod.
• Characteristic
fracture behavior in
ceramics
– Origin point
– Initial region (mirror) is flat
and smooth
– After reaches critical
velocity crack branches
• mist
• hackle

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The acceleration rate for the newly formed crack
increases with stress level.

Therefore the mirror radius will also decrease with

increasing stress level. It has been experimentally
observed that
1
f 
rm
f : stress level at which fracture occurred

rm : mirror radius

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 Wallner lines are caused by the interaction between a
stress pulse (a sonic wave) with the crack front.

Wallner lines on an A356-

T6 cast aluminum alloy
(region between the white
arrows).

The black arrow indicates

direction of crack
propagation.

(Source: I. Le May, Examination of Damage and Material Evaluation, Failure Analysis and Prevention,
Vol. 11, ASM Handbook, ASM International, 2002, pp. 351-370.)

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 Wallner Lines in Flexure

Formation of primary Wallner line due to interaction between crack front and
surface defect (point 0) for thin specimen broken in flexure. The tensile
surface is at the top and the fracture origin is off the figure to the left.

(Source: I. Le May, Examination of Damage and Material Evaluation, Failure Analysis and Prevention,
Vol. 11, ASM Handbook, ASM International, 2002, pp. 351-370.)
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Wallner lines in glass plate broken in bending. The most prominent
line was caused by a scratch on the top surface.

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 The Cantilever Curl

Failure due to a uniform tensile stress or a bending stress can

frequently be distinguished by how the crack emerges from the side of
the specimen opposite the failure origin.

During flexural fracture, the stress in the uncracked material in front of

the crack rapidly changes from compression to tension. The orientation
of the principal stress changes in such an unpredictable way that any
asymmetry in the loading is amplified, causing the crack to wander out
of its original plane.

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Formation of cantilever curl in specimens broken in bending: behavior for
(a) uniform tensile stress and (b) bending stress.
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 Optical micrograph of a fractured glass rod, showing the
telltale cantilever (or compression) curl.

G. D. Quinn, B. T. Sparenberg, P. Koshy, L. K. Ives, S. Jahanmir, and D. D. Arola, “Flexural

Strength of Ceramic and Glass Rods”, Journal of Testing and Evaluation 37, 2009, pp. 1-23.
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Under some circumstances, fracture of ceramic materials
will occur by the slow propagation of cracks, when stresses
are static in nature. This phenomenon is called static
fatigue or delayed fracture.

The term “fatigue” is somewhat misleading inasmuch as

fracture may occur in the absence of cyclic stresses.

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