The Efficiency of Normal Distribution in Statistical Characterization of the Experimentally Measured Strength for Ceramics

摘要

It has been assumed that the measured strength of ceramics follows a Weibull distribution. However, there is still no sound evidence to confirm this assumption. On the contrary, some studies have shown that other distributions such as normal distribution may describe more appropriately the measured strength data than Weibull distribution. In this paper, an extensive comparison between the efficiencies of normal and Weibull distributions in describing the strength variations was performed based on the analyses of 27 strength datasets, each containing 30 data measured on different ceramics. It was shown based on Anderson-Darling (A-D) test that, in most cases, normal distribution may give a satisfactory description for the data. The analysis results reveal that, at least for the small datasets generally used in laboratory evaluation, it seems to be unnecessary to perform a Weibull analysis because a simple normal distribution analysis is accurate enough for the statistical characterization of strength for the examined materials.