Correlation between fracture toughness, work of fracture and fractal dimensions of Alumina-mullite-zirconia composites

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to show the correlation between the fractal dimension, D, and mechanical properties such as work of fracture, gammawof, and fracture toughness, K Ic. Alumina-mullite-zirconia composites were characterized by the slit-island method, SIM, to obtain values of D and its fractional part, D*. The fracture surface roughness was also evaluated using a cyclic voltametric method. It will be shown that there is a positive experimental dependency of gammawof on D* and that there is not an evident correlation between K Ic and D*.

Keywords

• work of fracture
• fracture toughness
• fractal dimension
• roughness