ABSTRACT
During the past several decades high-perfonnance ceramics have emerged as enabling materials for many key technologies. Examples of where a property, or more usually the combination of several properties, of modern ceramics have been enabling include fiber optic data transmission based on low-optical-loss glass fibers; high-perfonnance electronic packages based on the combination of dielectric constant, thennal conductivity and thennal expansion of ceramics such as aluminum oxide or aluminum nitride; advanced cutting tools based upon the hot hardness, chemical inertness, thennal shock resistance and toughness of silicon nitride or SiC whisker-reinforced aluminas. While, as these examples illustrate, ceramics may be chosen for their optical, electrical, magnetic, or mechanical properties, this chapter will focus on those properties of ceramics usually associated with their application as structural or wear components. There are several reasons for this emphasis. First, the readers of this book are most likely to have a mechanical rather than an electronic orientation. Second, the engineering difficulties in applying ceramics as optical and, increasingly, as electronic components are most often in areas such as attachment or thennal stresses, which are mechanical design issues. Lastly, the structural (mechanical load bearing) applications of ceramics are those projected to grow most rapidly over the next decade [ 1 ].
