Study on the Inherent Correlations of the Material Properties for Silicon Nitride Ceramic Balls

• DOI: 10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.1136.515
• Publication Date: 2016-01-14T02:55:24Z
• Authors: Ju Long Yuan; Long Fen Yu; Fan Li; Fen Fen Zhou; Ping Zhao; Wei Hang
• Keywords: 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences

Silicon nitride ceramic balls are successfully applied in advanced bearings. In order to improve the performance and precision for ball bearings, the research about the material properties of Si3N4 ball is shown in this paper. For the Si3N4 ball, the material properties can be described by the following factors: density, hardness, apparent porosity, crushing load and fracture toughness. In this paper, Si3N4 balls from three different manufacturers are tested to reveal the inherent correlations of the material properties, and the correlation coefficients are calculated. The results indicate that with the increasing of ball diameter, its crushing load increases correspondingly. The higher hardness contributes to the lower crushing load of the Si3N4 ball. Apparent porosity has a greater influence on the crushing load than hardness and the density. Hardness has the closest relevance with fracture toughness among the material characteristics, with the increasing of the hardness, the fracture toughness of Si3N4 ball becomes lower.