Small scale mechanical response of WC-Co cemented carbides

Abstract

In recent years, many efforts have been invested to determine the intrinsic mechanical properties for each constitutive phase of composite materials. The outstanding behaviour of WC-Co composites is mainly attributed to its microstructural assemblage, due to the combination of two phases with very different properties at the local level. The present work is aimed to evaluate the small scale microstructure/micromechanical relation for four different WC-Co grades. Within this context, a systematic procedure, involving massive nanoindentation and statistical analysis of the experimental data has been used to reach this purpose. It is found that WC crystals exhibit a clear hardness anisotropy, binder mean free path is critical for defining intrinsic hardness and flow stress for this phase; and microstructure-flow stress follows a Hall-Petch relationship.