Fracture behavior of Ce-TZP/alumina/aluminate composites with different amounts of transformation toughening. Influence of the testing methods

Increasing the transformability of the composites enhanced their crack growth resistance and consequently, increased their resistance to SCG, which was completely inhibited for the most transformable composites. Simultaneously, flaw tolerance was also improved although a decrease in strength was observed. Under all configurations, the composites exhibited a plastic behavior and it was shown that their properties are correlated to the crack shielding due to autocatalytic phase transformation that not only depend on the material transformability, but is also strongly influenced by the testing method.