Effect of span length on bending strength and Weibull modulus of sintered alumina bar

Abstract

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the bending strength of alumina both as a function of sintering temperature and span length. The fracture strength data was calculated on relatively a large number of samples for each data point (14). The strength data distribution was also used to evaluate the failure probability as well as the Weibull modulus which was correlated to the sintered density. It was observed that in the sintering temperature range of 1550 and 1600 OC the Weibull modulus showed that only one type of flaw behavior was operative in the sample and that the Weibull modulus increased with sintering temperature and decreased with increasing pan length. However at the highest sintering temperature 1650OC the Weibull statistics couldn’t be fitted to a single linear fit. This indicated that the data could be fitted to two different straight lines which implied that at 1650OC, two different flaw types controlled the sample failure.