As a new microscopically imaging tool, scanning electron acoustic micr
oscopy has been used to image the distribution of thermal stress in fu
nctionally gradient materials(FGM): Ni-ZrO2. The results show that the
variation of thermal stress in FGM can be clearly observed with SEAM.
Up to date, SEAM technique is only one of tool that can be used direc
tly to observe and image the distribution of thermal stress in FGM.