Databases & Standards

NIST databases

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (Gaithersburg, Md.) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce tasked with promoting “U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.” A partial list of NIST ceramic and glass property databases includes

• ACerS-NIST Phase Equilibria Diagrams: More than 33,000 critically evaluated diagrams for understanding temperature-dependent material interactions in ceramic and inorganic systems. Updated annually.
• NIST Ceramics Data Portal: Includes databases for high-temperature superconducting materials (1996), structural ceramics (2002), and property data summaries (2002) for alumina, silicon carbide, and titanium diboride. Also contains elastic moduli data for polycrystalline ceramics (2002), fracture toughness data for oxide glass (1985), and fracture toughness data for ceramics (1998). Last update to data content given in parentheses.
• NIST Recommended Practice Guide—Fractography of Ceramics and Glasses: Stand-alone resource that aims to make fractographic analysis of brittle materials less an art and more an engineering practice for scientists and engineers. Third edition published in 2020.

Other property databases

• Mat Web: Free materials information database with data on more than 180,000 materials, including metals, plastics, ceramics, and composites. Comprised mostly of data sheets and spec sheets supplied by manufacturers and distributors.
• MEMS Material Properties Database: Includes mechanical properties, electrical properties, optical properties, and other values acquired through a literature search conducted by MEMS Clearinghouse.
• NASA Ames TPSX Materials Properties Database: Offers data on more than 1,500 materials, compiled by various NASA Centers and industry sources. Most of the materials are designed for aerospace applications.
• Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD): World’s largest database for completely identified inorganic crystal structures. Around 12,000 new structures are added every year. This database is maintained by FIZ Karlsruhe, one of the large nonacademic information infrastructure institutions in Germany.

Standards

• ASTM C-28 Committee on Advanced Ceramics: This Committee, which was formed in 1986, currently has jurisdiction of 55 standards, published in the Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Volume 15.01.
• ISO/TC 206 Fine Ceramics: This Committee, which was formed in 1992, has published more than 150 standards in the field of fine ceramics materials and products in all forms, e.g., powders, monoliths, coatings, and composites.