Because of their brittle nature, ceramics, fiber-reinforced or unreinforced, are difficult to test in pure tension, compression and shear, primarily due to difficulties in gripping and uniformly ...

With a simple sample geometry, a 3-point-bend test can be used to obtain stress-strain behavior, elastic modulus in bending (flexural modulus), and failure limits in bending. The standards ASTM E855, ...

In my last column, I discussed uniaxial flexural strength testing of fiber-reinforced ceramics, that is, simple three- or four-point bending of a strip of material of rectangular cross section (see ...