Abstract
Fe-TiC composite powder was fabricated by high-energy milling of powder mixture of (Fe, TiC) and (FeO, $TiH_2$, C) as starting materials, respectively. The latter one was heat-treated for reaction synthesis of TiC phase after milling. Both powders were spark-plasma sintered at various temperatures of $680-1070^{\circ}C$ for 10 min. with sintering pressure of 70 MPa and the heating rate of $50^{\circ}C/min$. under vacuum of 0.133 Pa. Density and hardness of the sintered compact was investigated. Fe-TiC composite fabricated from (FeO, $TiH_2$, C) as starting materials showed better sintered properties. It seems to be resulted from ultra-fine TiC particle size and its uniform distribution in Fe-matrix compared to the simply mixed (Fe, TiC) powder.