Effects of Neutron Irradiation on Some Superplastic Characteristics of Tetragonal Zirconia Polycrystals Containing 3 mol% Yttria

. It was found that the elongation to fracture of the irradiated specimens wasquite small in comparison with that of unirradiated ones. The apparent activation energy for the superplastic flow of the irradiated 3Y-TZP wasfairly high, i.e. 785 135 and 693 26kJ mol for Light and Heavy irradiations, respectively. It appears that the induced defects, nucleartransmutation and radiation-induced segregation in the 3Y-TZP due to the neutron irradiation are responsible for these property changes.(Received February 24, 2004; Accepted May 10, 2004)Keywords: superplasticity, neutron irradiation, yttria stabilized tetragonal zirconia, irradiation damage, elongation, activation energy, strainrate sensitivity