Regression analysis of temperature-dependent mechanical and thermal properties of dielectric technical ceramics

Regression analysis is performed on a dataset of temperature-dependent material properties of several ceramic materials. The materials considered are alumina, aluminium nitride, beryllia, fused quartz, sialon and silicon nitride. The properties considered are density, Young's, bulk and shear moduli, Poisson's ratio, tensile, flexural and compressive strength, thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity, and thermal expansion coefficient. The dataset, previously reported by de Faoite et al. (J Mater Sci 47(10):4211, 2012), was compiled to facilitate the materials selection and design of a ceramic component for the Variable Specific-Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR®). Temperature-dependent material property data are required for accurate thermo-structural modelling of such ceramic components which operate over a wide temperature range. The goal of this paper is to calculate a set of regression coefficients to reduce this dataset to a tractable format for use in the materials selection and design of such components. Regression analysis could not be performed for all material properties for all of these materials, due to a lack of data in the literature, and these gaps in the available data are highlighted.