EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Advanced structural ceramics play an important role in aerospace propulsion systems because of the increasing severity of conditions during operation. To this end, graphene-based nanostructures (GBN) have been demonstrated to be potential candidates to achieve an enhancement of mechanical and electrical properties in advanced structural ceramic matrix composites. Nevertheless, these properties strongly depend on the aspect ratio of the graphene nanostructures, processing conditions such as dispersion methods and sintering parameters.

In this work, the influence of the addition of different graphene nanostructures on the mechanical properties and fracture mechanisms of yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia (3YTZP) is analyzed. With the aim of elucidating the GBN reinforcing effectiveness, contents from 1 up to 5 vol% have been incorporated to the ceramic matrix. Additionally, the effect of the processing conditions –including different dispersion methods such as ball milling, ultrasound probe, or bath sonication- and the sintering parameters are also evaluated.