This Technical Specification contains guidelines to be adopted when evaluating the appearance of the
fracture surface of an advanced technical ceramic. The purpose in undertaking this procedure can be
various, for example, for material development or quality assessment, to identify normal or abnormal
causes of failure, or as a design aid.
NOTE Not all advanced technical ceramics are amenable to fractography. In particular, coarse-grained ceramics
can show such rough surfaces that identifying the fracture origin may be impossible. Similarly, porous materials,
especially those of a granular nature, tend not to fracture in a continuous manner, making analysis difficult.