Our simulation results also explain that

Our simulation results also explain that such a perspective way can improve the mechanical characteristics of metal–ceramic composites if the high-strength multiscale thermally stable structures are formed in their surface layers under the impact of concentrated streams of charged particles. For example, the electron-beam irradiation on the surface layers of metal–ceramic alloy containing 50 vol.% of TiC and 50 vol.% of NiCr leads to a considerable increase in the mechanical and operating characteristics of the material [44,45]. The experimental results [44,45] showed that the increase in the operating characteristics of modified composite is due to a number of factors. Among them are the significant increase in the width of the interphase boundary between the matrix and reinforcing particles and the formation of a significant amount of secondary nanosized particles of TiC among these transition zones. Furthermore, the superfast heating of surface layer leads to the fragmentation and partial dissolution of most damaged carbide inclusions, and to the healing of small defects which are contained in the reinforcing TiC particles. The direct consequence of this is a significant increase in the strength (including tensile strength) of ceramic inclusions and the integral operational properties of the material. Fig. 13 shows the change of temporal durability at cutting and the micro-hardness of MCC TiC–NiCr after pulsed hippo signaling pathway beam irradiation in nitrogen-containing gas discharge plasma. It can be seen from Fig. 13 that the operating characteristics of the composite can be considerably improved by the electron-beam treatment of the surface layers of the material.
Study of porous ceramics with gel The next part of the paper is devoted to modeling the porous ceramics filled with gel, which matrix stiffness and strength are much higher than those of the inclusions. ZrO2(Y2O3) based ceramics was used as a matrix [3,4]. There are three maxima in pore size distribution bar chart for this material: 1 μm; 2 μm (comparable with grain size); 6 μm (cells). Gel-forming composition GALKA, developed for enhancing oil recovery [46], was used as the filler of the composite. In Ref. [47], gel filling was performed through spontaneous soaking of ceramics samples by initial gel-forming liquid composition during 24 h. Soaking occurs due to capillary effect. Then, the soaked sample was baked to form the gel at 80 °C for 1 h; the sample cooled in a kiln. Mechanical testing of the soaked ceramics showed that their mechanical properties depends on the structure of the initial ceramics powder. Corresponding experimental data are shown in Fig. 14. Thus, the effective elastic modulus and strength of the ceramics obtained from nanocrystalline powders significantly decreased after gel filling (Fig. 14(a)), while the properties of coarse-crystalline ceramics increased (Fig. 14(b)) [47]. Such strange effect may be explained by changing the interface between the matrix and gel inclusions. To ascertain the nature of changing mechanical properties of ceramics after filling its pores with gel, here we model the uniaxial compression of plane (plain strain) ceramics samples with empty pores as well as with pores filled with gel. It is assumed that fills only the 2 μm and 6 μm sized pores are filled with gel, which have equiaxial shape. The dimensions of sample are 300 × 300 μm. Response function of the automata modeling ceramics [3,4] corresponds to elastic-brittle material (like curve 2 in Fig. 6(b)), response function of the automata modeling gel corresponds to elastic–plastic material with bilinear hardening (like curve 1 in Fig. 6(b)). Large pores of the ceramics are modeled explicitly in the MCA model, while the 1 μm and less sized pores are taken into account implicitly (via the parameters of response function). The fracture criterion of ceramics automata is based on the threshold value of von Mises stress, but for pairs “gel-ceramics” a two-parametric criterion of Drucker–Prager is used.