Fracture Toughness of Alumina Ceramics Determined by Vickers Indentation Technique

Abstract

Abstract Fracture toughness (KIC) of high purity cold isostatically pressed alumina ceramic (CIP-Al2O3) was determined from the size of cracks induced by Vickers hardness testing at wide range of loads. The observed cracks appeared at following loads: 4.905 N, 9.81 N, 29.43 N and 49.05 N. The studied material exhibits half-penny crack system at lower load of 4.905 N, but it proceeds as the Palmqvist crack system at higher loads, which was determined computationally. For the fracture toughness calculation different models were compared. It was found that fracture toughness increases by rising applied load for all kind of models, which is explained by the indentation size effect. As the fracture toughness overestimation can lead to product malfunction, it is suggested to use the Niihara model, which gives the smallest fracture toughness values.