The figure is an example of how a fracture surface of this material looks like. The strong fibers form bridges over the cracks before they fail at elongations around 0.7%, and thus prevent brittle rupture of the material at 0.05%, especially under thermal shock conditions.W. Krenkel, ed.:Ceramic Matrix Composites, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2008, This allows using this type of ceramics for heat shields applied for the re-entry of space vehicles, for disk brakes and slide bearing components.
