Experimental Research on the Relationship between Surface Polishing and Fracture Strength for Ground Ceramics

Fracture strength is one of the key mechanics performances for engineering ceramics products, greatly influenced by the microscopic topography and residual stress field of ground surface. In this work, several testing equipments, such as the metallurgical microscope, surface profiler and X ray residual stress tester were introduced to investigate the relationships between microscopic topography, surface roughness, residual stress and fracture strength of ground ceramics, after the surface grinding and mechanical polishing. The experimental results show that a smoother machined surface with low roughness and residual stress is obtained through polishing with absolute alcohol for 20 minutes; the fracture strength of Si3N4SiC and Al2O3 are increased by 6.64%8.18% and 6.58% respectively, comparing to the ceramics without polishing; the surface stress concentration and residual tensile stress of polished ceramics are both reduced after an appropriate time of polishing process, which causes a certain improvement of ground fracture strength.