Fracture toughness and crack deflection in porous multilayered ceramics: application to NiO-YSZ

The arrangement of ceramic layers in laminated structures is an interesting way to enhance the flaw tolerance of brittle ceramic materials. The interfaces are expected to deflect cracks, increasing the fracture energy of the laminate compared to a monolithic material and thus raising the toughness. The target of this study is to predict the volume fraction of pores, in porous layers, required to cause crack deflection. Formulation of the fracture toughness and fracture energy as function of the material porosity is presented for random and ordered pores distribution. The effect of crack tip-flaws interaction is considered to estimate the pores volume fraction needed for crack deflection. In this work, dense and porous layers of NiO-YSZ material similar to the one used in the fuel cells technology are considered. The fracture energy of a porous material with an ordered distribution of pores shows a possibility of crack deflection at a porosity of 22.5%. However for a system with randomly distributed pores this possibility can be seen at 36% of porosity.