Ferroelastic domain switching in tetragonal zirconia

Ferroelastic domain switching is one of the possible toughening mechanisms in ceramic materials. Microstructural evidence of domain reorientation (switching) in polydomain tetragonal zirconia single crystals is observed upon the application of a unidirectional compressive stress. Dark field imaging of the three (112) tetragonal twin variants in a [111] zone indicates that two sets of twin variants grow at the expense of the third set upon application of uniaxial compression. The diminishing variant is the one with its c axis parallel to the compression axis. Indentation experiments on uniaxially compressed samples show an anisotropy in crack length. Crack propogates more easily along the loading direction. In this paper construction for the orientation relationship of domains and their twin boundaries is presented