The Role of a Threshold Stress on the Superplasticity of Ceramics Revisited

This paper is a brief review of the concept of superplasticity, which has been extensively used to explain the superplastic behavior of yttria-tetragonal zirconia polycrystals. The diverse theories develop to account for the origin of this quantity are outlined. In addition to that, a modern approach to this concept is reported. This new contribution can give rise to a revision of the until-now established concept of invariant microstructure associated to superplasticity.