China's Refractories

Abstract: This study addresses the challenge of directly determining the elastic modulus of complex shaped ceramic products—such as gas turbine combustor tiles—using conventional standardized methods, which are limited by specimen geometry. A rapid, non-destructive testing method based on the impulse excitation technique (IET) and a shape factor coefficient was proposed. Three types of shaped ceramic tiles were selected. The elastic modulus of standard rectangular specimens obtained by destructive sampling was used as the reference value, and the shape factor coefficient for each tile type was calibrated by combining the mass and fundamental frequency of the whole tile. Using this coefficient, the elastic modulus of whole tiles was calculated solely from non-destructively measured mass and frequency. The results show that the deviation between the elastic modulus derived from the proposed method and that from destructive testing is less than 5%, confirming the accuracy and reliability of the approach. The method overcomes the shape restrictions inherent in traditional testing, offering a fast, non-destructive solution suitable for onsite quality assessment and process control during the production of shaped ceramic components.

Key words: elastic modulus, shape factor coefficient, rapid testing, shaped ceramic tiles