Abstract
Ceramic fiber-matrix composites (CFMCs) are exciting materials for engineering applications in extreme environments. By integrating ceramic fibers within a ceramic matrix, CFMCs allow an intrinsically brittle material to exhibit sufficient structural toughness for use in gas turbines and nuclear reactors. Chemical stability under high temperature and irradiation coupled with high specific strength make these materials unique and increasingly popular in extreme settings. This paper first offers a review of the importance and growing body of research on fiber-matrix interfaces as they relate to composite toughening mechanisms. Second, micropillar compression is explored experimentally as a high-fidelity method for extracting interface properties compared with traditional fiber push-out testing. Three significant interface properties that govern composite toughening were extracted. For a 50-nm-pyrolytic carbon interface, the following were observed: a fracture energy release rate of ∼2.5 J/m2, an internal friction coefficient of 0.25 ± 0.04, and a debond shear strength of 266 ± 24 MPa. This research supports micromechanical evaluations as a unique bridge between theoretical physics models for microcrack propagation and empirically driven finite element models for bulk CFMCs.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 424-439 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Journal of Materials Research |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 28 2018 |
Funding
Kabel Joey * Hosemann Peter * a) Zayachuk Yevhen † Armstrong David E. J. † Koyanagi Takaaki ‡ Katoh Yutai ‡ Deck Christian § * Department of Nuclear Engineering , University of California Berkeley , Berkeley , California 94709 , USA † Department of Materials , University of Oxford , Oxford OX1 3PH , U.K. ‡ Materials Science and Technology Division , Oak Ridge National Laboratory , Oak Ridge , Tennessee 37830 , USA § Nuclear Technologies and Materials Division , General Atomics , 3550 General Atomics Court , San Diego , California 92121-1122 , USA a) Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: [email protected] Contributing Editor: Yanchun Zhou This paper has been selected as an Invited Feature Paper. 24 01 2018 28 02 2018 33 4 424 439 28 08 2017 08 12 2017 Copyright © Materials Research Society 2018. This is a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. 2018 Materials Research Society This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Nuclear Energy's Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) program. A portion of this study was also supported by the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy for the Advanced Fuels Campaign of the Fuel Cycle RandD program under contact DE-AC05-00OR22725 with Oak Ridge National Laboratory managed by UT Battelle, LLC. In addition, we would like to thank the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) fellowship program and the DOE-NEUP program for support. The authors would like to acknowledge the EPSRC for their support through grant number EP/N017110/1. Lastly, we would like to thank those involved with the UC Berkeley BNC facility and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory National Center for Electron Microscopy (LBNL NCEM) for enabling this research through access and expertise to the necessary facilities
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.K. | |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Oak Ridge Associated Universities | |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | |
| U.S. Army | |
| Department of Integrative Biology, University of California Berkeley | |
| Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council | EP/N017110/1, EP/P001645/1 |
| University of Oxford | |
| Chinese Materials Research Society | |
| Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge |
Keywords
- ceramic composite
- chemical vapor deposition
- coating
- fracture
- internal friction
- nano-indentation
- neutron irradiation
- nuclear materials
- toughness