Advanced engineering and functional ceramics are sensitive to damage cracks, which delay the wide applications of these materials in various fields. Ceramic composites with enhanced fracture toughness may trigger a paradigm for design and application of the brittle components. This paper reviews the toughening mechanisms for the nanolayered MAX phase ceramics. The main toughening mechanisms for...

The fracture toughness of ceramics can be improved by the incorporation of a variety of discontinuous, elastic reinforcing phases that generate a crack-bridging zone. Recent models of toughening by crack-bridging processes are discussed and used to describe the behavior observed in whisker-reinforced ceramics. The toughening response in ceramics reinforced with other types of discontinuous rein...

The role of particle-toughening for increasing impact damage resistance in carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites was investigated. Five carbon fibre reinforced systems consisting of four particle-toughened matrices and one system containing no toughening particles were subjected to low velocity impacts ranging from 25 J to 50 J to establish the impact damage resistance of each mater...

an epoxy resin was modified by silica nanoparticles and cured with an anhydride. the particles with different batches of 12, 20, and 40 nm sizes were each distributed into the epoxy resin ultrasonically. electron microscopy images showed that the silica particles were well dispersed throughout the resin. tensile test results showed that young’s modulus and tensile strength increased with the vo...

The development of strong, tough, and damage-tolerant ceramics requires nano/microstructure design to utilize toughening mechanisms operating at different length scales. The toughening mechanisms so far known are effective in micro-scale, then, they require the crack extension of more than a few micrometers to increase the fracture resistance. Here, we developed a micro-mechanical test method u...

Mineralized tissues, such as bone and tooth dentin, serve as structural materials in the human body and, as such, have evolved to resist fracture. In assessing their quantitative fracture resistance or toughness, it is important to distinguish between intrinsic toughening mechanisms, which function ahead of the crack tip, such as plasticity in metals, and extrinsic mechanisms, which function pr...

Two major mechanisms that could potentially be responsible for toughening in mineralized tissues, such as bone and dentin, have been identified-microcracking and crack bridging. While evidence has been reported for both mechanisms, there has been no consensus thus far on which mechanism plays the dominant role in toughening these materials. In the present study, we seek to present definitive ex...

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2015.07.022 1359-6454/ 2015 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Materials Science & Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. E-mail address: [email protected] (R.O. Ritchie). 1 Intrinsic toughening mechanisms operate ahead of the crack tip to resistance to microst...

Mechanisms were explored by which particles of poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT) are able to toughen a brittle epoxy. The epoxy studied was an aromati(z amine-cured diglycidyl ether of bisphenoI-A, which was toughened at about twice the rate with particles of poly(butylene terephthalate) as with particles of nylon 6, poly(vinylidene fluoride), or CTBN rubber. Many of the mechanisms of tougheni...