Study of Mechanical Characterization of Ceramic Specimens from a Brazilian Test Adaptation

Abstract

The Brazilian Test is easy to perform and its result is the tensile strength of the material provided certain ratios are fulfilled between the diameter of the sample, the load bearing width and the characteristic length of the material. In this paper we present experimental results obtained from 8 mm-thick ceramic cylinders whose diameter was 40 mm in length. The cylinders were obtained from a standard type of clay by pressing and subsequent baking at 900 ºC. We made a complete mechanical characterization of the material, which included obtaining fracture properties, and a numerical simulation of the Brazilian test based on the cohesive crack model. Numerical results confirm that the size and boundary conditions chosen for the test are adequate to get the actual tensile strength of construction ceramics, which prove that this type of test is useful to compare the strength of several types of construction ceramics in a simple and convenient way. Besides, it requires a very small amount of material to prepare the specimen

Keywords

• ceramic
• pressing
• brazilian test