Recent Insights on the Superplastic Behaviour of Ceramics

Abstract

Superplasticity is the ability exhibited by some fine-grained materials to be elongated a great deal with no failure. Such phenomenological definition accounts for the engineering view point of this remarkable property. From a fundamental basis, there is a full consensus to admit that it is essentially linked to the grain boundary motion under invariance of microstructure. Despite the great scientific effort carried out during the two last decades, or probably due to that, there is still a gap on the scientific comprehension of the equation describing superplasticity from a basic point of view, not to say about its potential extension to nanostructured materials. This paper presents the essential basis of a new model proposed to account for the main features of structural ceramics.