Thermal shock damage assessment of a BNW/SiO2 ceramic: insight from temperature-dependent material properties

Abstract The high-temperature service performance of nearly fully dense 20 wt.% BNW/SiO2 ceramic was systematically investigated. The oxidation damage and strength degradation of the whiskers combined with the surface microstructures of the samples predominantly influence the flexural strength from RT to 1000 °C. In previous work, the temperature dependence of the material properties is invariably ignored when evaluating thermal stress crack initiation and propagation behaviour. In this work, modified thermal shock models that include temperature-dependent material properties were established based on thermal-shock fracture (TSF) theory and thermal-shock damage (TSD) theory. Then, the thermal shock resistance (TSR) of the BNW/SiO2 ceramic was evaluated by preforming a water quenching test. The modified models could better explain the TSR behaviour of the ceramic, indicating that considering the temperature-dependent material properties will reveal the thermal shock damage mechanism more precisely.