Bias in the Weibull Strength Estimation of a SiC Fiber for the Small Gauge Length Case∗

It is known that the single-modal Weibull model describes well the size effect of brittle fiber tensile strength. However, some ceramic fibers have been reported that single-modal Weibull model provided biased estimation on the gauge length dependence. A hypothesis on the bias is that the density of critical defects is very small, thus, fracture probability of small gauge length samples distributes in discrete manner, which makes the Weibull parameters dependent on the gauge length. Tyranno ZMI Si-Zr-C-O fiber has been selected as an example fiber. The tensile tests have been done on several gauge lengths. The derived Weibull parameters have shown a dependence on the gauge length. Fracture surfaces were observed with SEM. Then we classified the fracture surfaces into the characteristic fracture patterns. Percentage of each fracture pattern was found dependent on the gauge length, too. This may be an important factor of the Weibull parameter dependence on the gauge length.