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Tool surfaces for the forming of shaped steel strips are typically made from cemented carbides. Disadvantages of these tools are that they suffer from roughening of the surfaces and severe wear, which deteriorates the surface quality of the products and restricts the lifetime of the tool. Due to their high hardness and better high-temperature properties, improvements of tool behaviour can be expected by the use of silicon nitride. During a collaborative project between industrial partners, universities and research centres, forming rolls made of silicon nitride were tested at several positions in rolling mills. The suitability of Si3N4-rolls in rolling mills could be demonstrated at low and medium hard loaded positions. At Böhler-Profil in Waidhofen/Austria the rollers were used for the preparation of shaped steel strips from blank feedstock. During this very severely loaded application a pair of rollers failed. It could be shown that the rolls failed due to thermal stresses which can be reduced to a large extent by an improved design.

For some years ceramic bearing balls based on silicon nitride have been routinely used in technical practice. An important property of bearing balls is their strength, but appropriate testing methods are still missing. In this paper four different methods for strength testing are applied to commercial bearing balls. Each of the tests needs a different type of specimen, their preparation needs a very different effort, and the stress state applied to the specimens is also very different. This causes pros and cons, which are discussed in detail. The conventional 4-point bending test characterises the material in the interior of the balls. The applied stress state is uniaxial. The machining of the bending bars out of the balls is time intensive and costly. The ball on three balls test also characterises interior of the balls. The stress state is biaxial. The machining of the disc shaped specimens out of the balls is less expensive than the production of bending bars, but the finish of the tensile loaded surface needs special care. The data of both types of tests can be converted into each other using Weibull theory. The specimens in the triple ball crush test are as-received bearing balls, which are squeezed together. This causes some kind of contact loading, as will also occur in service. Failure is caused by the creation and growth of contact cracks, followed by a collapse of the compressed and cracked material. A detailed analysis of test results is complicated. It can be speculated that the component’s behaviour is mainly influenced by the toughness of the material and that the flaws in the material or at the component’s surface are of less significance. In the newly developed notched ball test the highest stressed region is a part of the original surface of the balls. Machining of the notch is straightforward. The stress state is almost uniaxial. The strength depends on size of flaws in the surface region. Therefore the notched ball test is a relevant measure to characterize the quality of the bearing balls.

For hot rolling wires of high-alloyed steels or superalloys tools are nowadays made of ce¬mented carbides. In service they suffer from roughening of the surfaces and severe wear, which de¬teriorates the surface quality of the wires and restricts the lifetime of the tool. Due to their high hard¬ness and good high-temperature properties, improvements in tool behaviour can be expected by the use of silicon nitride tools. Experiments with several types of rollers were performed in commercial rolling mills. At modest and medium severe loaded positions (e.g. in the case of guidance rolls) silicon nitride rolls show superior performance to conventional steel or cemented carbide rolls. At the most severe loaded positions silicon nitride rolls were also superior to conventional rolls when rolling high strength steel wires. But for rolling superalloy wires, cracks, which limited further applications of the rolls, appeared in the roll surface profile (calibre). Cracks in the surface of the rollers are in general caused by Hertzian contact stresses, which can reach several hundred MPa. These cracks come into existence if a limiting load is exceeded. Then small flaws can quickly extend to a length of more then one millimetre, and then they stop again (pop in behaviour). Popped in cracks can slowly extend by cyclic fatigue up to a length where breaking out of large fragments of the rollers occurs. The critical load depends on the flow curve of the rolled materials and on the design of the rolls. For the analysed design it is exceeded when rolling superalloy wires, but it is not exceeded when rolling materials having a lower flow curve.

Silicon nitride rolls for wire hot rolling have been tested in the rolling mill. After short employment for processing of ultra-high strength materials, cracks appeared in the roll calibre, which limited further application of the rolls. In order to find out possible causes for the damage, relevant mechanical properties of the roll have been determined and thermally and mechanically induced stresses were assessed by numerical simulation. It has been found that thermal stresses are of little relevance, whereas mechanically induced stresses are high enough to enhance subcritical crack growth resulting in the development of the macroscopic cracks, so that the observed damage of the rolls could have been adequately explained. One further result of the analysis was that flaws induced by grinding are decisive for the service time of ceramic rolls, so that special attention has to be paid to the machining of the roll calibre.

Electroceramic varistors, typically based on ZnO, show a strong non-linear currentvoltage characteristics. Actually they can be considered as electrical isolators below a critical field strength and highly conductive above. These components are used as over voltage protection elements in various fields of electric and automotive industry. In testing and in service high power varistors are loaded with µs-voltage pulses and suffer high mechanical loads due to thermal shock and inertia effects. Therefore the reliability in terms of mechanical strength becomes a crucial mark of quality. In this work the microstructure and the strength of commercial high power varistors of three different producers are presented. By a subsequent fractographic analysis fracture initiating defects are identified. It is shown, that defects in the microstructure, which result from the processing of the varistor components, play a significant role for the strength of the ceramics and of course also for the service performance of the components.

PTCs are electrical resistors (thermistors) with a positive temperature coefficient. They change their resistivity up to seven orders of magnitude within a certain temperature range. Though these parts are only loaded electrically, they often fail due to thermo-mechanical stresses caused by Joule self heating. With the aid of an infrared camera system the temperature distributions of PTCs in service were investigated. They show a big variety in appearance, often strongly differing from the temperature distribution predicted by a model-calculation using homogenous material properties. The temperature distributions measured with the infrared system give information about gradients in material properties. Performing destructive tests by high electrical loading lead to fractures, which are initiated in the most stressed regions. Fractography was used to identify fracture origins. With the information of the fractography and thermal analysis of the infrared camera the FEM-model could be modified in order to understand different kind of fracture modes.

Modern low-voltage piezoelectric actuators consist of a stack of piezoceramic layers (PZT) with metallic electrodes in between. Due to the use of these parts in automotive applications, a big but sensitive market is opened. During application mechanical stresses are an inherent loading of these electro-mechanical converter components. Therefore some strength of the actuators is necessary to guarantee a demanded life time. Bending and tensile tests were performed on commercial components to measure the strength in axial direction. Fracture surfaces were investigated with the methods of fractography to get information about the weakest links in the microstructure.