Effect of volume content of the hardening phase on the hardness of dual ceramic composites

Modern technologies for the production of structural and functional materials make it possible to obtain highly efficient composites with a complex multilevel structure at various spatial scales. At present, methods for obtaining and studying the properties of dual composites, in which different compositions form a matrix and granules, have begun to be developed. In this work, we studied numerically the influence of the volume content of the TaB2-SiC granule in the ZrB2-SiC matrix on the effective hardness of such a dual composite using simulation of nanoindentation. The method of movable cellular automata was used as a simulation method. The results obtained showed that an increase in the volume content of TaB2-SiC granules from 10 to 30 % leads to an increase in hardness determined by indentation into the region between granules up to 15 % compared with a homogeneous distribution of TaB2 particles in the ZrB2(80)-SiC(20) composite (matrix of the dual composite). However, a further increase in the volume content of granules to 40–50 % leads to a decrease in the effective hardness of the dual composite.