McNamara, DeclanDeclanMcNamaraAlveen, PatriciaPatriciaAlveenCarolan, DeclanDeclanCarolanet al.2014-09-292014-09-292014 Elsev2014Procedia Materials Sciencehttp://hdl.handle.net/10197/5906Numerical investigations using the finite volume (FV) method were conducted to examine the effect of microstructure and mi- crostructural properties on the fracture strength of advanced ceramics with industrial applications. Statistically representative microstructural volumes were created using a diffuse-interface model using OpenFOAM-1.6-ext. Crack initiation and growth was modeled using a recently developed arbitrary crack propagation model. It was found that by varying the Young's modulus of the second phase material, a significant change in the maximum failure load was observed. It was also shown that there exists an opti- mum Young's modulus for which a maximum failure load will be reached. A number of microstructures with a varying percentage second phase material were investigated in this study. Results indicate that for a given set of material and cohesive parameters the maximum failure load was insensitive to the percentage second phase material. This study highlights the role that microstructure adconstituent properties of brittle ceramics have on influencing the fracture strength of such material. With this in mind, a para- metric study was undertaken to examine the competition between crack deflection and crack penetration at the interface between two materials. It was found that appropriate choice of interface strength and toughness as well as second phase material compliance was required in order to promote an overall strength and toughness increase through crack deflection and bridging. Such numerical modeling is essential in order to gain a greater understanding into the structure-property relationship that exists for such advanced ceramics.enThis is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Procedia Materials Science. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Procedia Materials Science (3, , (2014)) DOI: http://dx.doi/org/10.1016/j.mspro.2014.06.292Fracture strengthMicrostructural modelingFinite volume method.Journal Article31810181510.1016/j.mspro.2014.06.2922014-09-26https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/