Ceramic Uses In Engineering
Ceramic products are hard porous and brittle.
Ceramic uses in engineering. Silicon nitride si 3 n 4 and aluminium nitride aln are the main advanced engineering ceramics in this category there is a wide range of grades and types of these materials. The thermal stability wear resistance and resistance to corrosion of ceramic components make the application of ceramic the ideal choice for many industrial uses. Picture courtesy of nasa on the commons. Some elements such as carbon or silicon may be considered ceramics ceramic materials are brittle hard strong in compression and weak in shearing and tension.
Ceramic engineering like many sciences evolved from a different discipline by today s standards. Advanced ceramics and traditional ceramics are the main categories of ceramic materials. If aerospace is an extraordinary use for extraordinary ceramics construction is one of the best known uses for ordinary everyday ceramics. These material properties are utilized to produce number of commercial and domestic products such as pottery bricks advanced functional items etc.
As a result they are used to make pottery bricks tiles cements and glass. The characteristics of some of the more common are given below. Ceramic may be used as a noun in the singular to refer to a ceramic material or the product of ceramic manufacture or as an adjective. Alumina aluminium oxide al 2 o 3.
Ceramic materials can be identified by their general properties like high hardness brittleness chemical stability and low thermal conductivity. Diamond the synthetic variety is the ultimate engineering ceramic. Al 2 o 3 ceramic with purity up to 99 9 remains one of the most commonly used oxide ceramic electrical insulating materials even today. The strength of a ceramic is largely determined by two characteristics.
Ceramics can be organised into types or categories in terms of composition oxide carbide and so on. Types of engineering ceramics. Given below are some other important uses of ceramics. They withstand chemical erosion that occurs in other materials subjected to acidic or caustic environments.
A ceramic material is an inorganic non metallic often crystalline oxide nitride or carbide material. Engineering ceramics are those which have been specially produced to create ceramic components to provide solutions for engineering conditions with specialist requirements. It has for many years been used for cutting tools dies rock drills and as an abrasive. Alumina aluminium oxide al 2 o 3 is by far the most commonly used engineering ceramic and is generally specified as the ceramic of.
Its toughness k c and the size distribution of microcracks it contains. Its specific electrical resistance reaches 10 16 ω cm at room temperature while at 1600 c it still reaches a level of 10 6 ω cm. But it is extremely expensive. Ceramics are also used at many places in gas turbine engines.
Ceramic tiles helped to protect the space shuttle from heat when it came back into earth s atmosphere.