DU Chunsheng, GONG Jianghong, LIU Song
(Tianjin University)
Abstract: The time - to - failure of mullite ceramic is measured as a function of applied stress in both air and water at room temperature, respectively. It is shown that the scatter of experimental data is reduced significantly in water compared with that in air. At high levels of applied stress, the delayed failure of mullite in water is considered as a result of stress corrosion cracking. When the applied stress is lower than a characteristic value, ao, however, another mechanism which involves the generation, coalescence, and propagation of new microflaws seems to be the dominating process of delayed failure for mullite.
Keywords: Delayed failure, stress corrosion, slow crack growth, mullite ceramic