WC/Co Coating on a Mild Steel Substrate through Underwater Shock Compaction Using a Self Combustible Material Layer (WC/Co Coating through Underwater Shock Compaction)

Abstract

The explosive compaction technique has been applied to consolidate WC/Co powder to make a coating layer on a steel substrate, and the microstructure and some properties are investigated. Explosive compaction was performed using an improved method through underwater shock compression. Two types of assemblies, open and closed types were used for the experiments for generating relatively low and high pressure respectively. The effect of a thin nitrocellulose layer placed above the powders and the effect of the following heat treatment were investigated. In most of the experiments, the WC/Co layer was successfully recovered without cracks. The effects of applying higher underwater shock pressure, role of nitrocellulose as self combustible material and the following heat treatment showed positive effect to improve the properties by the increase of hardness as well as wear resistance of the coating layer.