Thermo-Mechanical and Thermal Behavior of High-Temperature Structural Materials.

Technical ceramics represent a class of materials eminently suited for many critical engineering applications. Unfortunately, because of their brittleness and unfavorable combination of pertinent material properties, technical ceramics generally are highly susceptible to catastrophic failure in non-uniform thermal environments, which give rise to thermal stresses of high magnitude. The objective of the present program is to improve the qualitative and quantitative understanding of the nature of thermal stress failure of brittle structural materials, including the experimental as well as theoretical variables. In order to achieve this objective, the participating investigators and scope of the program are organized such that full advantage is taken of the combined inputs from a number of engineering disciplines. In a similar spirit, a number of studies were conducted in cooperation with investigators at other institutions. The effort of this program consists of four main themes, including experimental thermal shock testing with supporting analyses, measurement of thermophysical properties relevant to thermal stress failure, the analysis of mechanisms of thermal stress failure and the dissemination of information on thermal stresses in the form of review articles, conferences, etc.