Damage characteristics of YAG transparent ceramics under different loading conditions

Abstract

YAG (Y3Al5O12) transparent ceramics have attractive application prospects for transparent armor protection modules because of their excellent light transmittance and anti-ballistic capability. Understanding the fracture behavior and damage mechanism of YAG is necessary for armor design. To explore the damage characteristics of YAG under compression and tension, shock compression and shockless spalling experiments with soft recovery technique are conducted. The spall strength of YAG is obtained and the recovered samples are observed by CT and SEM. It is shown that the macroscopic damage characteristic of YAG under compression is vertical split cracks with oblique fine cracks distributed in the entire sample, while that under tension is horizontal transgranular cracks concentrated near the main spall surface. The cracks generated by macroscopic compression, tension and shear stress extend in similar tensile form at the microscale. The proportion of transgranular fractures on spall surfaces is higher than that of cracks induced by macroscopic compression. Meanwhile, higher loading rate and longer loading duration increase the transgranular fracture percentage.

Keywords

• YAG transparent Ceramics
• Damage characteristics
• Impact loading
• Shock compression
• Spall strength