Impact Testing on Al₂O₃ and Al₂O₃/ZrO₂ Laminated Composites

This study presents an investigation about the damage characteristics and mechanical properties of Al2O3/ZrO2 laminate composites under low velocity biaxial and transient loading (BLTL). These multilayer laminates have different layer thickness therefore residual stresses and are compared to a 13-layer alumina specimen. Impact tests were conducted using a drop-weight test facility with impact energies ranging from 0.033-0.160 kgm. Optical microscopy was used to observe the damage characteristics of the impacted specimens. The load-time and energy-time histories produced by the impact tests in conjunction with the observation of the optical photographs give a good view of the behaviour that characterize the multilayers of Al2O3 (A) and Al2O3/ZrO2 (AZ) ceramics under the selected experimental conditions.