• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.370-378
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• 2018

Cold forging, carried out at room temperature, leads to high dimensional accuracy and excellent surface integrity as compared to other forging methods such as warm and hot forgings. In the cold forging process, WC-Co (Tungsten Carbide-Cobalt) alloy is the mainly used material as a core dies because of its superior hardness and strength as compared to other structural materials. For cold forging, die life is the most significant factor because it is directly related to the manufacturing cost due to periodic die replacement in mass production. To investigate die life of WC-Co alloy for cold forging, mechanical properties such as strength and fatigue are essentially necessary. Generally, uniaxial tensile test and fatigue test are the most efficient and simplest testing method. However, uniaxial tension is not efficiently application to WC-Co alloy because of its sensitivity to alignment of the specimen due to its brittleness and difficulty in thread machining. In this study, shape of specimen, tools, and testing methods, which are appropriate for uniaxial tensile test for WC-Co alloy, are proposed. The test results such as Young's modulus, tensile strength and stress-strain curves are compared to those in previous literature to validate the proposed testing methods. Based on the validation of test results it was concluded that the newly developed testing method is applicable to other cemented carbides like Titanium carbides with high strength and brittleness, and also can be utilized to carry out fatigue tests for further investigation on die life of cold forging.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.44-50
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• 2022

Transition metal carbides (TMCs) are used to process difficult-to-cut materials due to the trend of requiring superior wear and corrosion properties compared to those of cemented carbides used in the cutting industry. In this study, TMC (TiC, TaC, Mo₂C, and NbC)-based cermets were consolidated by spark plasma sintering at 1,300 ℃ (60 ℃min) with a pressure of 60 MPa with Co addition. The sintering behavior of TMCs depended exponentially on the function of the sintering exponent. The Mo₂C-6Co cermet was fully densified, with a relative density of 100.0 %. The Co-binder penetrated the hard phase (carbides) by dissolving and re-precipitating, which completely densified the material. The mechanical properties of the TMCs were determined according to their grain size and elastic modulus: TiC-6Co showed the highest hardness of 1,872.9 MPa, while NbC-6Co showed the highest fracture toughness of 10.6 MPa^*m^1/2. The strengthened grain boundaries due to high interfacial energy could cause a high elastic modules; therefore, TiC-6Co showed a value of 452 ± 12 GPa.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.526-531
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• 2014

Thermal shock resistance property has recently been considered to be one of the most important basic properties, in the same way that the transverse-rupture property is important for sintered hard materials such as ceramics, cemented carbides, and cermets. Attempts were made to evaluate the thermal shock resistance property of 10 vol% TaC added Ti(C,N)-Ni cermets using the infrared radiation heating method. The method uses a thin circular disk that is heated by infrared rays in the central area with a constant heat flux. The technique makes it possible to evaluate the thermal shock strength (Tss) and thermal shock fracture toughness (Tsf) directly from the electric powder charge and the time of fracture, despite the fact that Tss and Tsf consist of the thermal properties of the material tested. Tsf can be measured for a specimen with an edge notch, while Tss cannot be measured for specimens without such a notch. It was thought, however, that Tsf might depend on the radius of curvature of the edge notch. Using the Tsf data, Tss was calculated using a consideration of the stress concentration. The thermal shock resistance property of 10 vol% TaC added Ti(C,N)-Ni cermet increased with increases in the content of nitrogen and Ni. As a result, it was considered that Tss could be applied to an evaluation of the thermal shock resistance of cermets.