● Name: Muhammad Kashif
● Roll Number: 2020-ME-38
● Department: Mechanical Engineering
● Subject: Engineering Materials
● Assignment
Test Report.
● Ceramic
A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-
resistant materials made by shaping and then firing a nonmetallic mineral, such
as clay, at a high temperature. [1][2] Common examples are earthenware,
porcelain, and brick.
The word "ceramic" comes from the Greek word κεραμικός (keramikos), "of
pottery" or "for pottery",[6] from κέραμος (keramos), "potter's clay, tile, pottery".
[7] The earliest known mention of the root "ceram-" is the Mycenaean Greek ke-ra-
me-we, workers of ceramic written in Linear B syllabic script.[8] The word
"ceramic" may be used as an adjective to describe a material, product or process,
or it may be used as a noun, either singular, or more commonly, as the plural
noun "ceramics".[9]
1. Materials
2. Crystalline ceramics
● Crystalline ceramic materials are not amenable to a great range of
processing. Methods for dealing with them tend to fall into one of two
categories – either make the ceramic in the desired shape, by reaction in
situ, or by "forming" powders into the desired shape, and then sintering to
form a solid body
● Non ceramics
● Noncrystalline ceramics, being glass, tend to be formed from melts. The
glass is shaped when either fully molten, by casting, or when in a state of
toffee-like viscosity, by methods such as blowing into a mold.
● History
Human beings appear to have been making their own ceramics for at least
26,000 years, subjecting clay and silica to intense heat to fuse and form
ceramic materials. The earliest found so far were in southern central
Europe and were sculpted figures, not dishes.[10] The earliest known
pottery was made by mixing animal products with clay and baked in kilns
at up to 800°C.
1. Properties
Mechanical properties
Cutting disks made of silicon carbide
Mechanical properties are important in structural and building materials as well as textile
fabrics. In modern materials science, fracture mechanics is an important tool in
improving the mechanical performance of materials and components. It applies the
physics of stress and strain, in particular the theories of elasticity and plasticity, to the
microscopic crystallographic defects found in real materials in order to predict the
macroscopic mechanical failure of bodies. Fractography is widely used with fracture
mechanics to understand the causes of failures and also verify the theoretical failure
predictions with real-life failures.
● Electrical properties
Semiconductors
Some ceramics are semiconductors. Most of these are transition metal oxides that are II-
VI semiconductors, such as zinc oxide. While there are prospects of mass-producing
blue LEDs from zinc oxide, ceramicists are most interested in the electrical properties
that show grain boundary effects. One of the most widely used of these is the varistor.
These are devices that exhibit the property that resistance drops sharply at a certain
threshold voltage.
Optical properties
Optically transparent materials focus on the response of a material to incoming light
waves of a range of wavelengths. Frequency selective optical filters can be utilized to
alter or enhance the brightness and contrast of a digital image.
● Example
● Barium titanate: (often mixed with strontium titanate) displays
ferroelectricity, meaning that its mechanical, electrical, and thermal
responses are coupled to one another and also history-dependent. It
is widely used in electromechanical transducers, ceramic
capacitors, and data storage elements. Grain boundary conditions
can create PTC effects in heating elements.
Bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide, a high-temperature
superconductor
Boron oxide is used in body armor.
Boron nitride is structurally isoelectronic to carbon and takes on
similar physical forms: a graphite-like one used as a lubricant, and a
diamond-like one used as an abrasive.
○ Products
2. Refractories, such as kiln linings, gas fire radiants,
steel and glass making crucibles
3. Whitewares, including tableware, cookware, wall tiles,
pottery products and sanitary ware [16]
4. gas burner nozzles
5. ballistic protection, vehicle armor
6. nuclear fuel uranium oxide pellets
7. biomedical implants
8. coatings of jet engine turbine blades
9. Ceramic matrix composite gas turbine parts
10. Reinforced carbon–carbon ceramic disk brakes
11. missile nose cones
12. bearing (mechanical)
13. tiles used in the Space Shuttle program
. Classification
Ceramics can also be classified into three distinct material categories:
Oxides: alumina, beryllia, ceria, zirconia
Non-oxides: carbide, boride, nitride, silicide
Composite materials: particulate reinforced, fiber reinforced, combinations of oxides and
nonoxides.
Each one of these classes can be developed into unique material properties because
ceramics tend to be crystalline.
Applications
. Knife blades: blade of a ceramic knife will stay sharp for much longer than that of a
steel knife, although it is more brittle and susceptible to breaking
. "Advanced composite ceramic and metal matrices" have been designed for most
modern armoured fighting vehicles because they offer superior penetrating resistance
against shaped charges (HEAT rounds) and kinetic energy penetrators.
. Carbon-ceramic brake disks: for vehicles are resistant to brake fade at high
temperatures.
● References
. Carter, C. B.; Norton, M. G. (2007). Ceramic materials: Science and engineering.
Springer. pp. 3 & 4. ISBN 978-0-387-46271-4.
. Wachtman, John B., Jr. (ed.) (1999) Ceramic Innovations in the 20th century, The
American Ceramic Society. ISBN 978-1-57498-093-6.
