Effects of Milling Time on Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Composite WC-(Fe₃Al-B) Consolidated by Spark Plasma Sintering

Abstract

Cobalt is widely used to produce WC-Co hard metals, but this binder has problems of shortage and unstable price. In this work, cobalt was replaced by an iron aluminide intermetallic binder. WC-10%(Fe3Al-3%B) composite was prepared by vibration milling of WC, Fe, Fe-B, and Al powders and sintered by spark plasma sintering (SPS) at 1150 °C for 8 min under 30 MPa. The milling time was 0.17, 12, 25 and 50 h. The SPS was efficient to consolidate the composite resulting in relative density of ~98% or higher. With increasing milling time, Vickers hardness (HV30) of composite increased from 12 to 14 GPa due to the enhanced homogeneity of microstructure, while the fracture toughness, KIc, determined by an indention fracture method using Shetty equation, remained constant at around 9.1 MPa.m1/2.