Cavitation wear of ceramics - part I. Mechanisms of cavitation wear of alumina and tetragonal zirconia sintered polycrystals
Zbigniew Pędzich, Robert Jasionowski, Magdalena Ziąbka
Quarterly No. 4, 2013 pages 288-292
DOI:
keywords: cavitation, erosion, alumina, tetragonal zirconia
abstract The usage of ceramic materials in applications endangered by intensive cavitation could limit erosion phenomena. In the presented work, cavitation erosion resistance of commonly used oxide phases (-alumina, tetragonal zirconia) in structural application were investigated. Volumetric wear of both materials was compared to the wear rate of FeAl48 alloy. Both oxides were more resistant for cavitation than intermetallic phase. Observations by means of SEM technique showed that surface destructions run in a similar way for both investigated oxides. The degradation proceeded by removing of the whole grains from sintered body. However, in the alumina grains were removed from a wide area, opposite to the zirconia material, which was degraded in limited, ribbon-like areas. In this case destruction reached deeper than only the one grain into material.