Fracture Toughness and Physical Properties of Zirconia Toughened Barium Ferrite

Barium ferrite ceramic known as ferromagnetic material, has been widely used for permanent magnet materials. The barium ferrite as ceramic magnet in application can experience to un-anticipate fracture, it has low fracture toughness. The fracture toughness of the barium ferrite can be improved by addition of zirconia. The barium ferrite specimens were added zirconia with various weight fractions i.e. 0%, 1%, 2%, and 3%. The specimens were produced by uniaxial compacting pressure of 30 MPa, and then were sintered at 1100 ᵒC for 1 hours. The specimens were characterized by using scanning electron microscope (SEM) to observe the morphology of fracture surface. The mechanical properties were characterized by using Vickers Hardness and the biaxial strength by ball on three ball/B3B method. The fracture toughness of the specimen was calculated by biaxial strength (B3B-KIc) method. The result of the SEM photographs showed porosity increased with increasing zirconia content, it corresponded with relative density of spesimens. The relative density of spesimens decreased with incerasing zirconia content. The maximum hardness, biaxial strength and B3B-KIc were obtained at the specimen containing 1% weight of zirconia.