Effects of WC on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the PM steel

In this article, the WC-steel was manufactured through powder metallurgy (PM) technique. In the compaction process, the stress was selected to be 600 MPa and sintering process performed in dissociated ammonia atmosphere. The temperature and time of sintering were 1120 °C and 1 h, respectively. The microstructure evaluations were carried out by optical microscope (OM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). In addition, the compression tests were conducted on the manufactured PM steel specimens. The results was shown that the WC particles distributed randomly in the agglomerated iron particles. Furthermore, the compression properties of manufactured PM steel specimens were improved by increasing the WC content.

Keywords:

PM steel , WC particles , Sintering process , compression properties , microstructure