LAUSR

Abstract Starting from synthetic raw materials (CaZrO3 and MgO), microstructural and mechanical properties were optimised in order to obtain dense multiphasic ceramic, then finite element method (FEM) of an equimolar (1:1) CaZrO3-MgO composite was performed in order to obtain the effective elastic modulus. Composite presents two main phases of orthorhombic CaZrO3 (81.5 wt.%) and cubic MgO (18.5 wt.%); For 1500 °C, relative density of 99.9%, characteristic strength of 168 MPa, hardness of 7.8 MPa and toughness of 2.5 MPa.m1/2 were obtained. FEM simulation was performed using two representative volume elements (RVE’s) with edge lengths of 14 μm (933 grains) and 17 μm (1670 grains), using isotropic elastic model, and anisotropic on specific set of crystallographic planes. The results of FEM using isotropic approach for the two RVE’s are perfectly aligned with the experimental (245 GPa), while the anisotropic model shows a difference of 6.5%.