Effect Of Heating Rate and Sintering Temperature on Mechanical Properties of W-Cu Composites Produced via Spark Plasma Sintering

Abstract— This work was done to investigate the effect of heating rate and sintering temperature on the structure and mechanical properties of W-50Cu (wt.%) composites using spark plasma sintering technique. For investigate the effect of sintering temperature, the W-50Cu composites were sintered at temperature in the range of 900 to 975^oC for 30 min using the heating rate of 50 ^oC/min meanwhile in order to see the effect of heating rate, the composites were sintered at 950 ^oC for 30 min at different heating rate from 25 to 200^oC/min. The results show that all the sintered composites have a good distribution of W particles in Cu matrix. The increase of sintering temperature led to higher density, larger W average particle size and better strain at break (by compressive test), however, the hardness has a tendency to decrease at higher sintering temperature. The heating rate how an opposite effect in comparison with sintered temperature. The increase of heating rate led to the lower density, smaller W particles and lower strain at break of sintered sample but higher Vickers hardness.