Cyclic fatigue of a sintered Al₂O₃/ZrO₂ ceramic

A systematic experimental and theoretical study on the crack growth behaviour of a sintered Al₂O₃/ZrO₂ ceramic under cyclic loading is presented. It is found that in the cyclic fatigue experiments conducted on the single-edge-notched beam (SENB) geometry, for similar testing conditions, the crack growth rates are significantly faster than those under static fatigue. Al₂O₃/ZrO₂ therefore suffers genuine mechanical fatigue. Further experiments with the compact tension (CT) geometry show that the mechanical fatigue effect arises mainly from the degradation of the bridging mechanism. A theoretical analysis based on the compliance technique and a power law relationship between the crack-wake bridging stress and the crack-face separation is developed to evaluate quantitatively the degradation of the bridging stress due to cyclic fatigue.