Abstract
Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) method was applied to investigate morphology of cavities in superplastically deformed 3 mol% yttria stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystals (3Y-TZP). The 3Y-TZP specimens were deformed in tension at 1723 K with an initial strain rate of 3.3×(10)^<-4>s^<-1> in the air to pre-determined nominal strains ranging from 0.0 to 200%. Results obtained from SANS experiments were as follows : The volume fraction of all cavities showed no significant increase during the deformation up to nominal strain of about 20%, but it subsequently increased with raising nominal strain. Distributions of volume fraction of cavities to cavity diameter obtained from the SANS data showed that highest peaks appeared at a cavity diameter of around 0.4μm accounted for the largest in number among all the cavities existed.
