Abstract
The current study proposed melt infiltration into entangled pressed wire as a proper method for rapid and energy-efficient production of tungsten‑copper composites. The process includes wire packing through different strategies, pressing, and infiltration steps. First, a predesigned wire structure through different strategies of simple, spiral, cylindrical, and spherical is packed and pressed to form a permeable tungsten skeleton. Then, by infiltrating molten copper under a dry hydrogen atmosphere into the porous preforms, the W20Cu composite is fabricated and characterized. An almost fully dense sample with excellent hardness of 238.1 HV1 and high conductivity of 58.64% IACS in W20Cu composite was achieved. These values are almost 25% and 50% higher than that from the conventional melt infiltration method, respectively. It was seen that the packing strategy is so effective in achieving the best properties where the processed composite by spherical packing strategy exhibits better density, conductivity, and hardness than the sample produced via the other three packing strategies. However, all the properties of the melt infiltration into entangled pressed wire processed composite via all packing strategies are higher than those processed via conventional methods. These excellent properties could be attributed to the mostly bonded tungsten phase, high purity, pore-free, and suitable distribution of tungstens which are a result of this process characteristics. Besides, lower cycle time and energy consumption are other advantages of the new process compared to conventional melt infiltration via powder metallurgy. This approach presents a promising prospect for future industrial applications.
Published Version
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