Role of grain boundaries in determining strength and plastic deformation of yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia bicrystals
Mechanical properties of yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia (YSTZ) bicrystals under compressive loading are investigated by atomistic simulations. Previous studies on deformation of single-crystal YSTZ showed that some specific orientations promote dislocation emission, tetragonal to monoclinic phase transformation, or both. In this work, nanograins with different orientations are selectively combined to generate bicrystals with various grain boundaries (GBs).