Unified Molding and Simulation for Nano-structured Tungsten Carbide

Nano-structured tungsten carbide compacts with cobalt matrices (WC-Co) offer new opportunities for achieving superior hardness and toughness combinations. A unified modeling and simulation tool has been developed to produce maps of sintering pathways from nanocrystalline WC powder to sintered nano-structured WC-Co compacts. This tool includes (1) die compaction, (2) grain growth, (3) densification, (4) sensitivity analysis, and (5) optimization. All material parameters were obtained by curve fitting based on results with two WC-Co powders. Critical processing parameters are determined based on sensitivity analysis and are optimized to minimize grain size with high density.