Abstract
Ceramic microspheres are widely used in various applications, such as nuclear fuel particles in reactors, ZrO2 particles for bone fillers, and SiC particles for precision grinding media. To improve the mechanical performance and enhance the safety of these microspheres, the ability to rapidly and accurately determine their mechanical properties is of critical importance. However, due to the close relationship between the fabrication process, microstructure, and internal defect configuration of ceramic microspheres, their mechanical characterization cannot be effectively conducted using conventional methods that ignore the spherical geometry. At present, no standardized experimental technique or computational model exists for such evaluation. This study investigates the crushing mechanics of ceramic microspheres by combining an improved flat-plate crushing test with numerical simulations. Polycrystalline diamond (PCD) was adopted to enhance the conventional flat-plate crushing setup, which typically exhibits low sensitivity to specimen size but is not suitable for high-hardness materials. A dedicated high-precision experimental device was developed for testing sub-millimeter ceramic microspheres. Six groups of ZrO2 microspheres with varying diameters were tested, yielding precise force–displacement curves that captured the complete crushing process. In parallel, numerical simulations based on Voronoi tessellation and global cohesive elements were conducted to replicate the crushing process. By calibrating the model to match the experimental force–displacement curves, the mechanical parameters of the microspheres were determined in a scientifically reliable and precise manner. This integrated approach provides a new perspective for evaluating the mechanical properties of ceramic microspheres.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 12202426, U21B2058). This work was supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF under Grant (GZC20241366), the funding from the Aeronautical Science Foundation of China (2024Z061070001), the Fundamental research funds for the central universities (xzy012025038), and the funding from Shaanxi Natural Science Foundation (2025JC-YBQN-071). This paper has received funding from the China Scholarship Council.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 12202426, U21B2058).
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H.M.: Writing-original draft, visualization, validation, software, methodology, investigation, formal analysis. J.L.: Writing-review and editing, supervision, resources, project administration, methodology, investigation, funding acquisition, data curation, conceptualization. Y.Z.: Visualization, software, resources. Y.D.: Writing-review and editing, supervision. Y.S.: Investigation. Q.L.: Writing-review and editing, supervision, methodology, funding acquisition, conceptualization.
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Ma, H., Lv, J., Zhou, Y. et al. Determination of mechanical properties of ceramic microspheres using an improved flat-plate crushing test and global cohesive zone modeling. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-37357-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-37357-6
