Silicon nitride was the first nitride developed for engineering applications. The excellent combination of thermomechanical properties makes silicon nitride a good candidate for applications where high hardness and mechanical properties are fundamental. However, the low fracture toughness of this material limits its use as structural material. The improve of mechanical properties of silicon nitride comes from many factors, like refined microstructure by restraining grain growth, localized stress, crack tip bridging, etc. Within these factors, microstructure formation of the silicon nitride is critically important for the final properties. The design of silicon nitride based composite materials is of particular interest because of their improved high temperature strength and fracture toughness. In this work, Si3N4-TaC particulate composite was investigated. For this study was prepared a basis composition (CB) with 90%wt a-Si3N4, 6%wt and 4%wt Y2O3 and Al2O3, respectively. TaC (20%vol) was added into CB and after mixture, in high-energy milling, the powder was compacted into pellets. The kinetics of sintering was studied by means of dilatometry. The shrinkage rate versus time and temperature curves exhibit two well-defined peaks. The first peak refers to the particle rearrangement process and the second, more pronounced, to solutionreprecipitation process. It is quite clear that the presence of TaC particles has small influence on sintering kinetics of silicon nitride. It was observed the complete a®b-Si3N4 phase transformation. The microstructure shows good homogeneity both in regard of grain size and secondary phase distribution.
Taguchi’s method of optimization of fracture toughness parameters of Al-SiCp composite using compact tension specimens
