Highly carbide filled composite materials for the mining and drilling industry

Abstract

The mining and drilling industry has a need for highly wear resistant large diameter drill heads. The manufacturing of such drill heads takes place by near net shape infiltration of a powder matrix using tungsten carbides with copper based infiltration alloys. The drill heads are ex-posed to different geologic formations which triggers a desire for very flexible design parame-ters resulting in a complex need for both high wear resistance, but also high bending strength as well as good repair-ability. Such contradictory needs have to be solved using adjusted car-bide compositions. The paper covers an area where only little information has been published so far. It is written from an Industry point of view and presents the industrial production rou-tine for the drill heads as well as the current state of the art material solutions. The influences of different types of carbides, particle sizes and compositions on the resulting properties will be discussed. Additionally, the paper will show recent challenges of the drilling industry resulting from the shale gas boom.