Abstract
Strength and fatigue life of a thin leaf spring, which was made of 3mol%Y2O3 partially stabilized zirconia (PSZ) and was fabricated by hot-pressing, were tested to estimate the possibility of ceramics as a spring material.
Four-point bending test, cyclic bending fatigue test at room temperature and static fatigue test at 573K were carried out for the estimation of the strength.
From the results of the tests, it is found that the PSZ has rather low heat resistivity and the wide scattering of the material strength. Therefore, the greatest care on the effect of the temperature and the scattering of the strength are required to design a PSZ spring. The fatigue life, which is important to design a spring, can be estimated by using the technique of fracture mechanics and Weibull distribution function.
