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Cited by 117Aerogels and thermal insulationAdvanced ceramic materials synthesisGlass properties and applications

Mechanical Properties and Brittle Behavior of Silica Aerogels

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Woignier, Thierry, Primera, Juan, Alaoui, Adil, Etienne, Pascal, Despestis, Florence, Calas-Etienne, Sylvie·2015·Gels
DOI 10.3390/gels1020256PMC PMC6318623
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Abstract

Sets of silica gels: aerogels, xerogels and sintered aerogels, have been studied in the objective to understand the mechanical behavior of these highly porous solids. The mechanical behaviour of gels is described in terms of elastic and brittle materials, like glasses or ceramics. The magnitude of the elastic and rupture modulus is several orders of magnitude lower compared to dense glass. The mechanical behaviours (elastic and brittle) are related to the same kinds of gel characteristics: pore volume, silanol content and pore size. Elastic modulus depends strongly on the volume fraction of pores and on the condensation reaction between silanols. Concerning the brittleness features: rupture modulus and toughness, it is shown that pores size plays an important role. Pores can be considered as flaws in the terms of fracture mechanics and the flaw size is related to the pore size. Weibull’s theory is used to show the statistical nature of flaw. Moreover, stress corrosion behaviour is studied as a function of environmental conditions (water and alcoholic atmosphere) and temperature.

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  • The Rayleigh number Ra ~10^-4 is small due to the tiny length scale, indicating that heat transfer by natural convection of the air is essentially negligible.

    “the Ra ~10 -4 is still small due to the tiny length scale, indicating that the heat transfer by natural convection of the air is essentially negligible. 46”

    From Analysis and improvement of the hot disk transient plane source method for low thermal conductivity materials (2020) · cites this paper as [46]

    The Experimental Section (4.2, page unavailable) discusses crack propagation and moisture-controlled mechanical testing, not heat transfer. Searches for the Rayleigh number, Ra ≈ 10⁻⁴, and natural convection found no passage in our copy addressing the claim. (LLM, conf=0.77)

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Authors
Woignier, T., Primera, J., Alaoui, A., Etienne, P., Despestis, F., & Calas-Etienne, S.
Affiliations
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
  • Universidad del Zulia (VE)
  • Faculté des Sciences et Techniques de Tanger, B.P. 416, 90000 Tanger, Marroco
  • Laboratoire Charles Coulomb (FR)
Corresponding author
Woignier, Thierry
ORCID
Venue
Gels
Publisher
MDPI AG
Published
2015-12-10
Volume
1
Issue
2
Pages
256-275
ISSN
2310-2861 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.3390/gels1020256
PMC
PMC6318623
OpenAlex
W2192943331
Cited by
117
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 19 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 4
FWCI
0.67
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Gels (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Chemistry › Spectroscopy › Aerogels and thermal insulation
  • Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Ceramics and Composites › Advanced ceramic materials synthesis
  • Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Ceramics and Composites › Glass properties and applications
Keywords
silica aerogel, silica xerogel, mechanical properties, brittleness, elastic modulus, rupture modulus, toughness, pore size, porosity, silanol condensation, fracture mechanics, Weibull analysis, stress corrosion, temperature effects

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