TY - JOUR A1 - Laquai, René A1 - Gouraud, F. A1 - Müller, Bernd R. A1 - Huger, M. A1 - Chotard, T. A1 - Antou, G. A1 - Bruno, Giovanni T1 - Evolution of Thermal Microcracking in Refractory ZrO2-SiO2 after Application of External Loads at High Temperatures N2 - Zirconia-based cast refractories are widely used for glass furnace applications. Since they have to withstand harsh chemical as well as thermo-mechanical environments, internal stresses and microcracking are often present in such materials under operating conditions (sometimes in excess of 1700 °C). We studied the evolution of thermal (CTE) and mechanical (Young’s modulus) properties as a function of temperature in a fused-cast refractory containing 94 wt.% of monoclinic ZrO2 and 6 wt.% of a silicate glassy phase. With the aid of X-ray refraction techniques (yielding the internal specific surface in materials), we also monitored the evolution of microcracking as a function of thermal cycles (crossing the martensitic phase transformation around 1000 °C) under externally applied stress. We found that external compressive stress leads to a strong decrease of the internal surface per unit volume, but a tensile load has a similar (though not so strong) effect. In agreement with existing literature on -eucryptite microcracked ceramics, we could explain These phenomena by microcrack closure in the load direction in the compression case, and by microcrack propagation (rather than microcrack nucleation) under tensile conditions. KW - Electro-fused zirconia KW - Microcracking KW - Synchrotron x-ray refraction radiography (SXRR) KW - Thermal expansion PY - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-477431 VL - 12 IS - 7 SP - 1 EP - 15 PB - MDPI AN - OPUS4-47743 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -