Influence of experimental parameters on fracture toughness of ceramics measured by different techniques

For three important structural ceramics, viz. sintered alumina, silicon carbide and silicon nitride, the present work compared four methods of fracture toughness (Klc) evaluation, e.g. single edge notched beam (SENB) technique, chevron notched beam (CNB) technique, indentation fracture (IF) technique and fractographic method (FM). Further, for a given method, the influence of various experimental parameters such as blade width, notch tip radius, normalized notch length and the loading rate on the measured value of Klc, was also evaluated