Articles
  • Comparative study of WC-Co-VC-Cr3C2 cemented carbide by spark plasma sintering: densification, microstructure, and mechanical properties

  • Jeong-Han Lee, Jae-Cheol Park, Bum-Soon Park and Hyun-Kuk Park*

  • Automotive Materials & Component R&D Group, Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Gwangju 61012, Korea

  • This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Ultrafine-grained WC-Co-VC-Cr3C2 cemented carbide was consolidated from homogeneously synthesized powder using spark plasma sintering at 1300 °C under 60 MPa. The densification behavior of WC-Co-VC-Cr3C2 was determined based on the shrinkage strain with sintering kinetics. As the Cr3C2 addition increased, the secondary (Cr, W)Cx phase was attributed to abnormal grain growth in the basal facet of WC, whereas grain boundary strengthening was induced by the separation of the WC/Co interface with the addition of VC. The mechanical properties of WC-Co-VC-Cr3C2 cemented carbide depend on the grain size and lattice strain of the hard phase, in contrast to the toughening mechanism, and were correlated with the crack propagation and fracture resistance. The WC-Co-Cr3C2 cemented carbide with the best combination of mechanical properties was found, including a hardness of 1958.9 kg/mm2 and fracture toughness of 7.3 MPa∙m1/2


Keywords: Cemented carbide, transition metal carbide, sintering kinetics, spark plasma sintering, mechanical property

This Article

  • 2023; 24(2): 216-221

    Published on Apr 30, 2023

  • 10.36410/jcpr.2023.24.2.216
  • Received on Jul 6, 2022
  • Revised on Sep 29, 2022
  • Accepted on Nov 3, 2022

Correspondence to

  • Hyun-Kuk Park

  • Automotive Materials & Component R&D Group, Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, Gwangju 61012, Korea
    Tel : +82-62-600-6270 Fax: +82-62-600-6149

  • E-mail: hk-park@kitech.re.kr