Title:
Experimental Characterization of the Effect of Microstructure on the Dynamic Behavior of SiC

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dc.contributor.advisor Zhou, Min
dc.contributor.author Martin, Samuel R. en_US
dc.contributor.committeeMember Dattatraya Dandekar
dc.contributor.committeeMember Qu, Jianmin
dc.contributor.committeeMember Naresh Thadhani
dc.contributor.department Mechanical Engineering en_US
dc.date.accessioned 2005-03-02T22:19:08Z
dc.date.available 2005-03-02T22:19:08Z
dc.date.issued 2004-07-08 en_US
dc.description.abstract For roughly fifteen years the military has sought to use the properties of ceramics for armor applications. Current high-performance ceramics have extremely high compressive strengths and low densities. One ceramic that has been shown to be highly resistant under ballistic impact is silicon carbide (SiC). It has been found that even within the silicon carbides, those manufactured by certain methods and those with certain microstructural properties have advantages over others. In order to understand the microstructural reasons behind variations in ballistic properties, plate impact tests were conducted on two sintered silicon carbides with slightly different microstructures. Two variations of a silicon carbide with the trade name Hexoloy SA were obtained through Saint Gobain. Regular Hexoloy (RH) and Enhanced Hexoloy (EH) are pressureless sintered products having exactly the same chemistries. EH went through additional powder processing prior to sintering, producing a final product with a slightly different morphology than RH. Samples of each were characterized microstructurally including morphology, density, elastic wavespeeds, microhardness, fracture toughness, and flexure strength. The characterization revealed differences in porosity distribution and flexure strength. It was determined that the porosity distribution in EH had fewer large pores leading to an 18% increase in flexural strength over that for RH. The focus of the mechanics of materials community concerning dynamic material behavior is to pin down what exactly is happening microstructurally during ballistic events. Several studies have been conducted where material properties of one ceramic type are varied and the dynamic behavior is tested and analyzed. Usually, from one variation to the next, several properties are different making it hard to isolate the effect of each. For this study, the only difference in the materials was porosity distribution. Plate impact experiments were conducted at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) using the gas gun facilities within the Impact Physics Branch. A VISAR was utilized to measure free surface velocities. Tests were performed on each material to determine the Hugoniot Elastic Limit (HEL) and spall strength. Spall strength was measured as a function of impact stress, and pulse duration. en_US
dc.description.degree M.S. en_US
dc.format.extent 996810 bytes
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1853/5024
dc.language.iso en_US
dc.publisher Georgia Institute of Technology en_US
dc.subject Microstructural characterization en_US
dc.subject Flexure strength
dc.subject Hexoloy
dc.subject Fracture toughness
dc.subject Gas gun
dc.subject HEL
dc.subject Plate impact
dc.subject Silicon carbide
dc.subject SiC
dc.subject Dynamic behavior
dc.subject Spall
dc.title Experimental Characterization of the Effect of Microstructure on the Dynamic Behavior of SiC en_US
dc.type Text
dc.type.genre Thesis
dspace.entity.type Publication
local.contributor.advisor Zhou, Min
local.contributor.corporatename George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
local.contributor.corporatename College of Engineering
relation.isAdvisorOfPublication fc76c5b8-74a4-465e-bec3-175d191f022f
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication c01ff908-c25f-439b-bf10-a074ed886bb7
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication 7c022d60-21d5-497c-b552-95e489a06569
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