Options
2008
Conference Paper
Titel
The use of hard and ultrahard ceramics in transportation and security applications
Abstract
The paper reviews the development of hard and ultrahard ceramic materials especially for light weight personal body armors, gas and oil drilling and metal machining in the automotive industry. The properties of ceramics offer many possibilities for high-performance materials used in advanced applications. The combination of low density with high hardness is well suited for this applications such as light weight armor, and where the intrinsic properties of ceramics fall short, composite materials offer a better solution. The superior properties of polycrystalline diamond (PCD) finds many applications that are related to transportation or security, for instance in oil and gas drilling. In rock drilling applications PCD drill bits are designed to remove rock by shearing rather than by crushing or grinding, as is the case for most other types of drill. Ultrahard materials based ceramics are used in oil and gas drilling as well as metal machining in the automotive industry. Polycrystalline cubic boron nitride (PCBN) is used for machining ferrous materials. Cubic boron nitride does not react with iron at high temperatures at the same rate as diamond. The paper also reports on a new hard material (B6O-Al2O3, doped or undoped) with promising potential in ferrous alloy machining applications for cutting tools in the automotive industry. The materials are according to their application area harder, lighter, thermally and chemically stable, and/or with good high temperature mechanical properties. Special properties like density, Hv(0.5), Hv5, KIC, and phases are given.