Effect of Rhenium addition on tungsten heavy alloys processed through spark plasma sintering

Abstract

In this study, Rhenium is added to traditional (W-Ni-Fe) Tungsten heavy alloys keeping the ratio of Ni:Fe as 7:3 constant and varying the proportions of W and Re. The alloys were prepared using the powder metallurgy technique and sintered with spark plasma sintering heating through 1150 °C at 100 °C/min. It is observed that the Re is thoroughly blended with W in the Tungsten heavy alloys (WHA) matrix. It is seen that the yield strength and the ultimate strength are improved significantly with slight reduction in percentage elongation with the addition of Rhenium. The addition of Rhenium aided with spark plasma sintering makes WHAs feasible to be applied in applications where high strength and density are required. As the density of the Re is high, it makes the WHAs denser, and thus the relative density is 96.05% with 8% addition of Re inducing yield strength of 1530 MPa and ultimate tensile strength of 1560 MPa.