Creep failure analysis for ceramic composites containing viscous interfaces

This paper describes an experimental and theoretical study of the creep fracture of advanced ceramic composites under steady axial tension. Such composites consist of a high fraction of elongated ceramic grains, varying substantially in aspect ratio and embedded in a glassy matrix phase. For creep testing, a model test system was prepared, which consisted of well-aligned elongated mica platelets ({approximately} 60 vol%) and residual glass phase ({approximately} 40 vol%) in its final heat-treatment stage. The creep curves of several specimens under various applied loads and at a temperature (800 C) higher than the T{sub g} of the glass matrix ({approximately} 650 C) were obtained up to creep fracture. Micrographs of the creep fracture surfaces revealed substantial grain pull-out and cavitation in the matrix phase with virtually no transgranular fracture. The objective of this work is to simulate the creep response and fracture based on the accumulation of localized void growth and microstructural parameters, using a computational mechanics technique, called viscous break interaction (VBI), developed to compute stress fields around strongly interacting fractures or voids in composites with fibrous microstructures. To simulate the creep process up to fracture, a Monte Carlo model is developed which couples VBI with a statistical description of grain length. Both the experimental and simulation results show that random lengths and random overlap of the aligned grains naturally lead to (i) local and microstructure-sensitive damage evolution up to ultimate failure and (ii) substantial variation in failure times of seemingly identical specimens