Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is an important structural material with layered microstructure.Because of the plastic anisotropy,this material shows obvious mechanical hysteresis (nonlinear elastic deformation).There are hysteretic loops at the cyclical load-unload stress-strain curves of h-BN.Consequently,two hot-pressed h-BN cylinders with different textures were studied.The mechanical hysteresis is heavily texture-dependent.The area of hysteretic loop is linearly related with the square of loading stress-level.Two minor loops attached on the hysteretic loops with the same extreme stresses have congruent shapes.It can be concluded that the mechanical hysteresis of h-BN can be explained by a Kink Nonlinear Elastic model developed from the study of a ternary carbide Ti3SiC2.
