Detection of contact damage in ceramics by an ultrasonic method

Abstract

A pulse-echo ultrasonic technique consisting of focused normal-incident compressional waves was used for the detection and evaluation of surface and subsurface damage in micaceous glass-ceramic and silicon nitride samples. The damage was produced by indentation with a tungsten carbide ball. The nature of the damage was found to be material-dependent and was classified into two types: Hertzian cone cracks in the silicon nitride, and distributed subsurface microcracks in the glass-ceramic. While the cone cracks were visible on the surface as circular ring cracks, the distributed subsurface microcracks were not associated with any visible surface cracks. Both the cone cracks and the distributed subsurface microcracks were easily detected by the ultrasonic technique. In addition, the ultrasonic beam was focused to different depths below the surface of the glass-ceramic sample to probe the subsurface region containing the microfracture damage.