Tensile and Fatigue Characteristics of WC-20wt%Co Cemented Carbide with Sintering Methods

Abstract

WC-Co cemented carbide has excellent mechanical properties and is widely used in many industrial applications including cold forging die and cutting tools. WC-Co cemented carbide is manufactured by liquid phase sintering (LPS), and a new sintering process for densification has been developed. In this study, cylindrical rod shaped tensile and fatigue specimens of WC-20wt%Co cemented carbide were fabricated using commercial sintering methods such as vacuum sintering (VS), low pressure sintering (LP), sinter HIP (S-HIP), and HIP after vacuum sintering(VS+HIP). The effect of the sintering methods on microstructure, tensile properties and fatigue life was investigated. The relative density and average size of the WC particles increased after additional HIP treatment. Also large abnormal WC particles were observed. In the tensile test, the deviation of tensile properties (maximum tensile strength, elongation) was minimized in the VS+HIP specimen due to densification. Based on the uniaxial tensile-compression fatigue test, the SN curve of WC-20wt%Co cemented carbide was concluded to be logσa = -0.11244logNf +3.66817. Furthermore, the increase in WC particle size in the HIP process caused the VS+HIP specimen to have a lower fatigue life than the VS specimen. However, when high pressure was applied to the WC-Co cemented carbide during the sintering process, internal defects and the standard deviation of fatigue life were reduced.