Central Engineering Laboratories, Nissan Motor Company, 1, Natsushima-cho, Yokosuka, Kanagawa 237, Japan;Research Laboratory of Engineering Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 4259, Nagatsuda, Midori, Yokohama 227, Japan
Abstract:
Subscritical crack growth of sintered silicon nitride was analyzed in terms of the R -curve. Provided that the stress intensity at the crack tip governs the subcritical crack-growth velocity, the K I– V relationship of sintered silicon nitride exhibiting a rising R -curve is shown to shift to the high- K I region as the crack advances.