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3, SEPTEMBER 2004

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Fatigue Behavior of Multilamentary BSCCO 2223/Ag Superconducting Tapes

Alicia Salazar, Jos Ygnacio Pastor, and Javier LLorca
AbstractThe mechanical properties and the critical current were studied in three commercial multilamentary Bi2 Sr2 Ca2 Cu3 O10+ /Ag tapes subjected to monotonic and fatigue tension at 77 K in the longitudinal direction. It was found that transport properties were not compromised under monotonic tension if the maximum tensile stress remained below the conventional 0.2% yield strength. This magnitude was reduced by 10% to 20% in the case of fatigue loading, and the service life of the tape was dictated by the mechanical fatigue life. Index TermsBi2 Sr2 Ca2 Cu3 O10+ (BSCCO 2223) superconducting tapes, critical current, fracture and fatigue, mechanical properties.

I. INTRODUCTION

SCCO 2223 (Bi Sr Ca Cu O ) high-temperature ceramic superconductors show an outstanding current transport capacity at 77 K, but their industrial application has been hindered by their poor strength and toughness [1], [2], which leads to an extremely low strain to failure ( 0.05%). Dramatic improvements in ductility were obtained through the development of superconducting tapes made up of ceramic laments embedded in a ductile Ag alloy. Moreover, the thin tapes present some exibility (which is very important during handling) and sheathe the ber against environmental attack. The initial studies on single-lament tapes subjected to axial deformation showed that the critical strain (dened as the maximum strain withstood without any reduction in the critical current) was of the order of 0.2% and coincided with the onset of plastic deformation [3][6]. A division of the ceramic nucleus into multiple laments increased the critical current density and the damage tolerance because the brittle fracture of one ber did not interrupt the current ow [5]. Further improvements of up to 0.4% in the critical strain were obtained by reinforcing the tape with two stainless steel foils welded on both surfaces [7], [8]. While the behavior of single-lament and multilamentary tapes under monotonic axial loading is well established [7][12], very little information is available on the electrical
Manuscript received January 26, 2004. This paper was recommended by Associate Editor J. Willis. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology and by the European Union through Grant 2FD97-546C04-03. A. Salazar was with the Department of Materials Science, Polytechnic University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain. She is now with Escuela Politcnica Superior, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, 28933 Mstoles, Spain (e-mail: asalazar@escet.urjc.es). J. Y. Pastor and J. LLorca are with the Department of Materials Science, Polytechnic University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain (e-mail: jypastor@mater.upm.es; jllorca@mater.upm.es). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TASC.2004.830606

and mechanical behavior of these tapes subjected to fatigue [13][15]. However, cyclic stresses will appear during the service life of industrial components due to thermal cycling between cryogenic and ambient temperature, changes in the coil current associated with the device operation, which lead to variations in Lorentz forces acting on the conductors, alternating centrifugal forces due to motor acceleration or deceleration, etc. Although fatigue damage is an important reliability issue for the application of superconducting tapes in superconducting magnets, power-transmission cables and synchronous motors, the micromechanisms of deformation and fracture under axial fatigue have not been analyzed. This is the main goal of this investigation, which studies the electrical and mechanical performance of three commercial multilamentary tapes subjected to axial fatigue at 77 K. The results of the mechanical tests, together with the analysis of the fracture mechanisms by scanning electron microscopy, provide a basic understanding of the development of damage in the superconducting tapes upon axial cyclic deformation. II. MATERIALS AND EXPERIMENTAL TECHNIQUES Three multilamentary BSCCO 2223/Ag tapes were studied. The rst one (denominated Zerome) was supplied by Nordic Superconductors and the other two [named high current wire (HCW) and high strength and reinforced wire (HSRW)] were provided by American Superconductor Corporation. All the tapes were manufactured by the powder-in-tube method and heat-treated at 800 C900 C to obtain the superconducting BSCCO 2223 phase in the ceramic laments. The tapes were cut perpendicularly to their main axis, embedded in a conductive resin, polished in a diamond slurry (up to 1 m nish) and observed in a scanning electron microscope to ascertain the microstructural features which control their mechanical and electrical performance. The ambient temperature hardness of the Ag alloy in the tapes was measured on the polished sections by Vickers indentations under 0.1 load in a microhardness indentor (Akashi MK-EIII). Tensile and fatigue tests of the tapes at 77 K were carried out in the axial direction in a servo-hydraulic mechanical testing machine (Instron 8500 Plus). Tape pieces of 90 mm in length were gripped at both ends with a brass xture, specially designed to minimize surface damage in very thin tapes. The free tape length between the grips was 60 mm. The grips were attached to the actuator and to the load cell of the testing machine with two perpendicular hinges to remove any bending and torsion stresses on the tapes. The load train (hinges, grips and the tape) was placed inside a stainless steel tube coated with polyurethane which acted as the liquid nitrogen dewar.

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The tube was xed to the lower hinge with a toroidal joint to prevent leakage. Two polyvinyl chloride pieces were inserted above and below the load train to insulate electrically the testing machine, and the inside surface of the dewar tube was covered with ber glass felt to avoid any unintended electrical contact. The strain was measured during the tests with a low-weight resistive extensometer attached to the tape (Epsilon Model 3442). Current was provided by two power supplies (Sorensen DC 8 V-125 A) connected in parallel, and carried to the brass grips with Cu meshes. The voltage probes for the four-point critical current measurements were made up of Cu wires of 0.1-mm diameter attached to the tape with indiumbismuth solder 30 mm apart. The superconducting transition was detected with a multimeter (HP 34 401 A) using the standard criterion of 1 V/cm. The dewar was lled with liquid nitrogen before testing until the tape and the grips were completely immersed. Liquid nitrogen was added continuously until the actuator ceased to move to balance the thermal contractions and maintain a constant load of 10 on the tape. The test started when this equilibrium condition was reached, assuming that the specimen temperature was in equilibrium with that of the liquid nitrogen (77 K), and the dewar was periodically relled with liquid nitrogen during the test. Tensile tests were carried out under displacement control at cross-head rates of 150, 200, and 800 m/min for the Zerome, HCW, and HSRW tapes. Fatigue tests were performed under load control with a constant stress amplitude and sinusoidal load wave form at 40 Hz. The stress ratio , dened as the quotient between the minimum and maximum stresses in each cycle was 0.1, which is standard to characterize the fatigue behavior. Both tensile and fatigue tests ended with the mechanical failure of the tape. The critical current was measured in each tape before the beginning of the mechanical test, and afterwards in increments of 10 during the tensile tests, and after a certain number of cycles during fatigue. The fracture surfaces were examined under a scanning electron microscope. In addition, the tapes tested in fatigue were embedded in a conductive resin, polished along the longitudinal axis to remove the metallic sheath, and examined under the scanning electron microscope to ascertain the fracture micromechanisms in the ceramic laments. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION A. Microstructure The cross section of the Zerome tape is shown in Fig. 1. It is made up of a nucleus containing 83 ceramic laments of ellipsoidal shape (major axis 350 m, minor axis 20 m) dispersed in AgMg alloy. This metalceramic composite nucleus was encapsulated within a metallic sheath of the same AgMg alloy of 50 m thickness. The HCW and HSRW tapes presented a similar structure, although they had only 56 ceramic laments of slightly smaller dimensions ( 250 by 30 m) in the nucleus, and the HSRW tape was reinforced with two stainless steel foils of 35- m thickness joined to both tape surfaces by means of SnPb solder (Fig. 2). The divided by that of area of the ceramic superconductors the AgMg matrix in the three tapes is shown in Table I.

Fig. 1. Cross section of the Zerome tape. (a) General view. (b) Detail of the ellipsoidal ceramic laments embedded in the AgMg alloy. (c) Textured microstructure of the ceramic laments showing cracks perpendicular to the c axis and microporosity.

Good bonding was observed in all cases between the ceramic laments and the AgMg matrix and between this and the reinforcing foils. In addition, the metallic sheath was fully dense while microporosity and longitudinal cracks were detected in the ceramic laments [Fig. 1(c)]. The ceramic monolaments were formed by orthorhombic grains of the superconducting BSCCO 2223 phase, which grew during the annealing at 800 C900 C. The laments were planes parallel to clearly textured, with the crystallographic the at surface of the tape [Figs. 1(c) and 2(c)]. They were arranged in domains of aligned grains, the result of the piling of at grains whose thickness in the axis was in the submicrometer range. Micropores were observed at the intersection between misaligned domains as well as some long cracks perpendicular to the axis of the domains. The critical current of each tape at 77 K in the absence of mechanical deformation and external magnetic eld (Ico) was measured using the four-probe method, and the corresponding values are shown in Table I. The marked texture of the BSCCO 2223 grains in the laments was responsible for the excellent values of the current density, particularly in the HCW and HSRW tapes. The average hardness of the AgMg matrix, as provided by the Vickers indentations, is shown in Table I together with the corresponding standard errors. Each result is the average of ve tests carried out far from the nucleus. The differences in the hardness of the tapes are due to variations in the amount of Mg in the Ag alloy. Mg presents limited solid solubility in Ag, and Mg

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TABLE II TENSILE PROPERTIES OF THE TAPES AT 77 K

Fig. 3. Fracture surface of the HCW tape tested in tension at 77 K. The ductile failure of the AgMg sheath and the delamination of the tape nucleus from the metallic sheath are readily observed. Fig. 2. Cross section of the HSRW tape. (a) General view. (b) Detail of the tape showing the ceramic laments, the AgMg metallic matrix and one of the stainless steel foils joined to the matrix with a Pb-Sn solder. (c) Textured microstructure of the ceramic laments showing the microporosity. TABLE I TAPE PROPERTIES TABLE III CRITICAL STRESS AND STRAIN OF THE TAPES AT 77 K

particles are readily oxidized to MgO during the long annealing at high temperature [10], which leads to an increase in the plastic ow stress via the dispersion of oxide particles impenetrable by dislocations. B. Tensile Behavior Six tensile tests were done in each tape at 77 K. The results showed very little scatter, pointing to the excellent reliability of the tape processing techniques. The average mechanical properties of the tapes obtained from the stressstrain curves (yield stress at 0.2% offset strain, ; failure strength, , and elongation to failure, ) are included in Table II, with the corresponding standard errors. In general, all the tapes exhibited very limited strain hardening during plastic deformation, and the main differences appeared at the onset of plastic deformation. The HCW tape, with the lowest Mg content, had the poorest yield strength, while that of the HSRW had the highest as a result of the reinforcing effect of the stainless steel foils. The tape ductility was controlled by the ductile fracture of the

metallic phases, and this is clearly observed in the fracture surface of the HCW tape shown in Fig. 3. The fracture surface of the AgMg sheath showed dimples typical of a ductile failure induced by the nucleation, growth, and coalescence of cavities around the submicrometer-sized oxide particles dispersed in the matrix. The sheath was detached from the nucleus because the ceramic lamentsstrongly bonded to the AgMg matrixlimited the maximum strain in the latter. The fracture surface of the nucleus showed the structure of the superconducting grains made up by domains of aligned grains. In the HSRW tapes, the stainless steel foils were detached from the AgMg sheath which in turn was broken away from the tape nucleus because of the differences in the ductility of the three regions in the tape. The evolution of the critical current during the tensile tests demonstrated that degradation of the transport properties was very slight during the elastic regime and increased dramatically at the onset of plastic deformation. The average values of the and the critical stress , understood as the critical strain applied strain (or stress) which led to a 5% reduction in the critical current as compared to Ico, are presented in Table III. These results, basically in agreement with those obtained by other authors [6], [7], [11] in multilamentary tapes, indicated

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that the fracture of the ceramic laments started as the matrix began to deform plastically, and that for practical purposes, the conventional yield strength at 0.2% denotes the maximum tensile stress that can be carried by these tapes without signicant degradation of the transport properties. The higher yield strength of the Ag matrix achieved by alloying with Mg or Mn and reinforcing the tapes with stainless steel foils improved the critical stress and strain. The reinforcement with foils also led to a smooth reduction in the critical current with the applied strain, and the HSRW tapes still carried 20% of Ico at tensile strains of 0.7%. On the contrary, the critical current dropped to zero very sharply in the Zerome and HCW tapes as they began to deform plastically. C. Fatigue Behavior While the mechanical design criterion under monotonic axial tensile loading is clearly established, little is known about the mechanical and electrical performance under fatigue, and a similar design criterion is not available. To study this topic, the tapes were tested under constant cyclic stress amplitude up to failure . The maximum stress in each fawith a stress ratio tigue cycle in the rst test was very close to the monotonic yield in strength in Table II, and it was reduced by steps of 0.05 successive tests. The characterization of one tape was nished when the critical current remained constant throughout the test , which (until failure) for a maximum stress in each cycle was dened as the electric fatigue limit. If the tape is loaded , the electrical performance depends only cyclically below on the structural integrity of the tape: Damage in the ceramic laments is negligible before mechanical failure, and the reduction in the critical current is under 5%. On the contrary, , there is a progressive reduction in the critical current above indicative of the build-up of damage in the ceramic laments during fatigue. From the viewpoint of design, the maximum , and it should cyclic stress on the tapes should be limited to be checked that the tape can withstand the number of fatigue cycles expected during the service life of the components. The evolution of the critical current in the tape Ic (normalized by the initial critical current Ico) is plotted as a function of the number of fatigue cycles in Fig. 4(a), (b), and (c), for the Zerome, HCW, and HSRW tapes, respectively. They show that the critical current decreased more or less continuously with the number of cycles when the maximum cyclic stress was very was clearly found close to , but the electric fatigue limit in all the tapes: The critical current remained practically constant throughout the test and then dropped to zero as the tape are given in broke suddenly. The corresponding values of Table III, and it should be noted that they are very high (apand 0.9 ). Moreover, the tapes proximately between 0.8 were able to withstand a signicant number of fatigue cycles (between 30 000 and 90 000) at this cyclic stress level. The progressive degradation of the critical current with was the number of cycles in the tapes stressed above ascertained by examining longitudinal sections of the tapes, where the metallic sheath had been removed by polishing. The micrographs of the Zerome tape loaded with a maximum are shown in Fig. 5. Two types of cyclic stress of 0.95 microcrack can be observed in the ceramic monolaments,

Fig. 4. Evolution of the critical current Ic (normalized by the initial critical current, Ico) as a function of the number of fatigue cycles at 77 K. (a) Zerome. (b) HCW. (c) HSRW.

oriented in the longitudinal and oblique directions. Similar observations were made in the HCW and HSRW tapes and the corresponding micrographs are not shown for the sake

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Fig. 5. Polished longitudinal section of the Zerome tape fractured by fatigue at 77 K under a maximum cyclic stress of 0.95  . (a) General view showing longitudinal and transverse cracks in the ceramic laments. (b) Detail of the crack propagation through the ceramic monolaments.

of brevity. The longitudinal cracks, perpendicular to the axis of the grains, did not inuence the current transport, and some of them were present in the as-received material, as shown in Fig. 1(c). On the contrary, the continuity between the oblique cracks demonstrated that they propagated from one lament to the nearest neighbor. The accumulation of damage in one lament as a result of cyclic loading led to the nucleation and growth of a crack, which fractured the lament. The crack was stopped at the lamentmatrix interface but the stress concentration at the crack tip, as well as the load transfer from the broken lament, nucleated another crack in the neighbor lament. This process was responsible for the gradual reduction in Ic with the number of cycles observed experimentally. The orientation of these oblique cracks reected a compromise between the maximum tensile stresses on the ceramic monolaments, parallel to the tape axis, and the anisotropy in the fracture resistance of the BSCCO 2223 [2], [16]. Fracture of the textured BSCCO 2212 and 2223 samples along the axis is intergranular, and the fracture strength is approximately three to six times higher than that parallel to the axis, depending on the degree of texture [16]. Fracture in this latter

Fig. 6. Fracture surface of the HCW tape tested in fatigue at 77 K under a maximum cyclic stress of 0.95  . (a) General view. (b) Detail of the fatigue fracture surface in the AgMg sheath. The fatigue striations are marked with an arrow.

direction is produced by cleavage of the grains between Bi O layers consisting of two parallel, planar BiO sheets. The BiO bonds between adjacent layers are strongly distorted, leading to a large interlayer spacing, which reduces considerably the binding forces and facilitates interlayer decohesion. The cracks in the ceramic laments were nucleated by intergranular fracture of the superconducting domains perpendicularly to the tape axis, but deected during propagation through the weak planes, leading to a serrated crack path which, on average, was oblique to the tape axis. Damage by the progressive fracture of the ceramic laments was conned to the tape nucleus and did not inuence the mechanical performance of the tapes. Fatigue fracture was due to the nucleation and growth of a crack at the tape surface, which normally began at one of the tape ends, as is shown in the fracture surfaces of the HCW and HSRW tapes in Figs. 6 and 7, respectively. The fatigue crack was initiated at the AgMg sheath in the HCW tape [Fig. 6(a)], where the typical striations generated during the slow growth of the fatigue crack were observed at higher magnication [Fig. 6(b)]. The crack

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other tapes, the fatigue crack did not penetrate into the nucleus and was arrested at the nucleussheath interface. The nal fracture of the tapes took place suddenly when the fatigue cracks reached a critical size that led to the unstable propagation of the crack. IV. CONCLUSION The mechanical properties and the critical current were measured in multilamentary BSCCO 2223/Ag tapes subjected to monotonic and fatigue axial tension at 77 K. The tensile properties of the tapes, particularly the yield strength, increased with the strength of the AgMg metallic alloy and by reinforcing the tape with two stainless steel foils. The critical current remained constant during the elastic deformation of the tape and began to drop at the onset of plastic deformation. From the design viewpoint, these results demonstrated that the conventional yield strength at 0.2% denotes the maximum tensile stress that can be carried by the tapes without signicant degradation of their transport properties. The fatigue tests of the tapes under constant stress amplitude led to the denition of the electric fatigue limit, the maximum value of the cyclic stress at which the critical current remained constant throughout the test until the mechanical failure. Its value was between 80% and 90% of the yield strength in the three tapes studied. If the maximum cyclic stress surpassed the electric fatigue limit, the transport properties of the tape were degraded progressively as a result of the fatigue loads. The analysis of the longitudinal section of the fatigued tapes showed that damage occurs by the successive fracture of the ceramic laments. The accumulation of damage in one lament as a result of cyclic loading led to the nucleation and growth of a crack, which fractured the lament. The crack was stopped at the lamentmatrix interface but the stress concentration at the crack tip as well as the load transfer from the broken lament nucleated another crack in the neighbor lament, and led to the successive fracture of the ceramic laments during fatigue. Damage by the progressive fracture of the ceramic laments was conned to the tape nucleus and did not inuence the mechanical performance of the tapes No damage in the ceramic laments was detected below the electric fatigue limit, and the service life of the tape under such conditions was dictated by the mechanical fatigue strength. Fatigue failure in all the tapes was initiated at the surface of the external metallic sheath or at the stainless steel foil, and propagated through them, without penetrating the tape nucleus, until its size led to the unstable propagation of the crack. REFERENCES
[1] K. C. Goretta, M. T. Lanagan, P. J. Brent, S. E. Dorris, J. Joo, J. J. Picciolo, R. A. Shearer, J. P. Singh, S. Wasylenko, P. M. Winandy, X. W. Wang, C. A. Youngdahl, R. B. Poeppel, D. J. Miller, T. G. Holesinger, P. Kostic, and N. Chen, Processing and properties of bulk BiSrCaCuO superconductors, Appl. Supercond., vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 411415, 1994. [2] A. Salazar, J. Y. Pastor, and J. LLorca, Strength and fracture toughness of hot pressed bulk Bi Sr Ca Cu O and Bi Sr Ca Cu O =Ag at 77 and 300 K, Physica C, vol. 385, pp. 404414, 2003.

Fig. 7. Fracture surface of the HSRW tape tested in fatigue at 77 K under a maximum cyclic stress of 0.90  . (a) General view. (b) Detail of the fatigue fracture surface in the AgMg sheath. The fatigue striations are marked with an arrow. (c) Detail of the fatigue fracture surface in the stainless steel foil.

grew along the lateral AgMg sheath but did not propagate into the tape nucleus, as it was stopped at the sheathnucleus interface and led to the decohesion of the two regions in the tape. The fatigue crack began at the stainless steel foil surface in the HSRW tape, and grew initially in the foil and then penetrated the SnPb solder and AgMg sheath. As in the

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[3] S. Salib and C. Vipulanandan, Tensile stress-strain-critical current relationships for silver ber reinforced BPSCCO composite tapes, Materials Research Bulletin, vol. 32, no. 10, pp. 13331340, 1997. [4] K. Osamura and M. Sugano, Mechanical properties of powder-in-tube processed mono- and multi-lamentary Bi2223 tapes, Physica C, vol. 357360, pp. 11281133, 2001. [5] J. W. Ekin, D. K. Finnemore, Q. Li, J. Tenbrink, and W. Carter, Effect of axial strain on the critical current of Ag-sheathed Bi-based superconductors in magnetic elds up to 25 T, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 61, no. 7, pp. 858860, 1992. [6] B. Ullmann, A. Gbler, M. Quilitz, and W. Goldacker, Transport critical currents of Bi(2223) tapes at 77 K under mechanical stress, IEEE Trans. Appl. Superconduct., vol. 7, pp. 20422045, June 1997. [7] C. G. King, D. A. Grey, A. Mantone, K. G. Herd, and E. T. Laskaris, Mechanical stabilization of BSCCO-2223 superconducting tapes, IEEE Trans. Appl. Superconduct., vol. 7, pp. 20462050, June 1997. , and [8] A. Salazar, Mechanical properties of Bi Sr CaCu O superconducting ceramics and their composites, Bi Sr Ca Cu O Ph.D. thesis, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2004. [9] J. P. Singh, J. Joo, N. Vasanthamohan, and R. B. Poeppel, Role of Ag additions in the microstructural development, strain tolerance and critical current density of Ag-sheathed BSCCO superconducting tapes, J. Mater. Res., vol. 8, no. 10, pp. 24582464, 1993. [10] M. H. Apperley, R. Zeng, F. Darmann, and G. McCaughey, Properties of AgMg alloy sheathed Bi-2223 tapes, Cryogenics, vol. 40, pp. 319324, 2000. [11] Z. Lu, Y. He, S. Yang, J. Sun, X. Huang, J. Wang, Z. Duan, P. Zhang, F. Yong, and L. Zhou, Effects of axial tensile and bending strains on the critical current of Bi-2223 superconducting tapes, Physica C, vol. 337, pp. 150153, 2000. [12] H. S. Park, B. K. Ji, J. H. Lim, J. Joo, S. B. Jung, W. Nah, J. Yoo, J. Ko, and H. Kim, Characterization of the thermal conductivity and mechanical properties of sheath alloy materials for Bi-2223 superconductor tapes, IEEE Trans. Appl. Superconduct., vol. 11, pp. 32773280, Mar. 2001. [13] R. L. Holtz and D. U. Gubser, High-cycle fatigue in high temperature superconductor motor applications, in Proc. Int. Conf. Processing and Manufacturing of Advanced Materials, Las Vegas, NV, Dec. 2000. [14] M. Sugano, K. Osamura, and S. Ochiai, Inuence of dynamic and static stresses to mechanical and transport properties of Ag/Bi2223 composite superconductors, IEEE Trans. Appl. Superconduct., vol. 11, pp. 30223025, Mar. 2001. [15] R. L. Holtz, S. Fleshler, and D. U. Gubser, Fatigue of a reinforced high temperature superconducting tape, Adv. Eng. Materials, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 131134, 2001. [16] J. Y. Pastor, P. Poza, and J. Llorca, Mechanical properties of texhigh-temperature superconductors, J. Amer. tured Bi Sr CaCu O Ceram. Soc., vol. 82, no. 11, pp. 31393144, 1999.

Alicia Salazar received a degree in physics and the Ph.D. degree in materials science from Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 1999 and 2004, respectively. She was appointed Associate Professor in the Chemical, Environmental and Material Technology Department, School of Experimental Sciences and Technology of Mstoles. She has held a position of Resident Associate at Argonne National Laboratory, in 2000. During these years, her research activity has been mainly focused in the study of the mechanical properties of high-temperature superconducting ceramics, especially BSCCO compounds. This has led to the development of novel techniques of mechanical and electrical characterization.

Jos Ygnacio Pastor received a degree in physics and the Ph.D. degree in materials science from the Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 1988 and 1993, respectively. He was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, in 1995. During these years, his research activity has been focused in the study of the microstructure-mechanical properties relationship in structural advanced ceramics and composites. This work has required the development of novel experimental techniques to characterize the mechanical properties at extreme temperatures (from 77 K to 2000 K) in inert and aggressive environments and under monotonic and cyclic loads.

Javier LLorca received a degree civil engineering and the Ph.D. degree in materials science from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 1983 and 1986, respectively. He was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science, Polytechnic University of Madrid, in 1987, and Professor, in 1995. He has held positions as Invited Professor at Brown and Cornell Universities. During these years, his research activity has been focused in the study of the microstructuremechanical properties relationship in advanced structural materials. This has led to the development of novel multiscale simulation tools and techniques of mechanical characterization under extreme conditions. He is coauthor of over one hundred papers on these topics. Dr. LLorca has received the Research Award from the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences.