Thermal shock testing exposes products to alternating low and high temperatures to accelerate failures caused by temperature cycles or thermal shocks during normal use.
Thermal shock test ceramics.
As whisker reinforced silicon nitrides can show an improvement in room temperature strength and fracture toughness one would expect that these cmcs will also possess increased thermal shock resistance.
Thin circular disks are heated up to 1750 k with a tungsten halogen lamp yielding heating rates up to 1200 k s.
It is fairly easy to test ceramic items for their ability to resist the thermal shock to which they are likely to be exposed.
The transition between temperature extremes occurs very rapidly greater than 15 c per minute.
The thermal shock and thermal fatigue behaviour of ceramic materials has been determined with a new type of testing system 3.
Practical experience has shown that thermal shock tests do not lead to generally useful test data.
At present the research of thermal shock resistance on ceramic material is mostly concentrating on the determination of critical temperature differences thermal shock cycles residual strength.