Engineering Commons^™

Tunable Compressive Mechanical Behavior Of Ice-Templated Materials, Sashanka Akurati

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The inherent hierarchical microstructural organization in natural materials is responsible for their excellent mechanical properties beyond that predicted by the simple rule-of-mixtures. Further exhibit synergy between strength and toughness, otherwise mutually exclusive in brittle materials. Conventional processing methods are unable to replicate hierarchical microstructures in engineering ceramics akin to that observed in natural materials. Ice-templating has emerged as a potential technique to fabricate bioinspired hierarchical materials. This process involves simultaneous unidirectional solidification and phase segregation of aqueous suspensions. Ice-templated porous ceramic materials have received significant attention for overcoming several limitations of conventional ceramic foams currently used in numerous engineering applications. …