Anisotropic mechanical properties and fracture mechanisms of textured h-BN composite ceramics

The hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) grain shows typical lamellar structures, so textured materials can be achieved by arranging h-BN grains along the same direction. In this work, textured h-BN composite ceramics with the c-axis orientation arranged along pressure direction were manufactured by hot-press sintering using mullite as the sintering additive. The results show that sintering pressure is an important factor that affects not only the density and the textured degrees of composite ceramics, but also the mechanical properties. Based on the textured microstructure features, the composite ceramics show the obviously anisotropically characterized mechanical properties, such as elastic modulus, flexural strength and fracture toughness, together with various fracture mechanisms. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.