Mechanical strength and defect distributions in flash sintered 3YSZ

The influence of preexisting defects and the generation of new ones during flash sintering was studied in 3YSZ. Weibull statistics was used to analyse mechanical testing data from flash and conventionally sintered specimens with equal densification. The obtained values for Weibull modulus and characteristic strength are 6.09 and 371 MPa for the conventionally sintered samples, respectively, and 5.92 and 506 MPa for the flash sintered samples. It can be inferred that flash sintering does not alter significantly the defect distribution on the studied material. Preexisting defects were manufactured with rice starch as a pore forming agent, in 5, 10 and 15 vol%. Those samples were flash sintered in isothermal and constant heating rate experiments. The experiments show that there is no noticeable difference on the incubation time and the onset temperature for flash sintering.