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. 2021 Oct 2;14(19):5756.
doi: 10.3390/ma14195756.

Powder Metallurgical Processing and Characterization of Molybdenum Addition to Tungsten Heavy Alloys by Spark Plasma Sintering

A Raja Annamalai  1 , A Muthuchamy  2 , Muthe Srikanth  1 , Senthilnathan Natarajan  1 , Shashank Acharya  1 , Anup Khisti  1 , Chun-Ping Jen  3   4
Affiliations

Powder Metallurgical Processing and Characterization of Molybdenum Addition to Tungsten Heavy Alloys by Spark Plasma Sintering

A Raja Annamalai et al. Materials (Basel). .

Abstract

The effect of adding molybdenum to the heavy tungsten alloy of W-Ni-Fe on its material characteristics was examined in the current study. The elemental powders of tungsten, iron, nickel, and molybdenum, with a composition analogous to W-3Fe-7Ni-xMo (x = 0, 22.5, 45, 67.5 wt.%), were fabricated using the spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique at a sintering temperature of 1400 °C and under pressure of 50 MPa. The sintered samples were subjected to microstructural characterization and tested for mechanical strength. The smallest grain size of 9.99 microns was observed for the 45W-45Mo alloy. This alloy also gave the highest tensile and yield strengths of 1140 MPa and 763 MPa, respectively. The hardness increased with the increased addition of molybdenum. The high level of hardness was observed for 67.5Mo with a 10.8% increase in the base alloy's hardness. The investigation resulted in the alloy of 45W-7Ni-3Fe-45Mo, observed to provide optimum mechanical properties among all the analyzed samples.

Keywords: materials characteristics; powder metallurgy; spark plasma sintering; tungsten heavy alloys.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Powder morphology of (a) tungsten, (b) nickel, (c) iron, and (d) molybdenum.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Graphical representation of variation in sintered density with the increase in molybdenum concentration.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy of the 45W-7Ni-3Fe-45Mo alloy.
Figure 4
Figure 4
SEM (BSE mode) micrographs of alloys with the increase in molybdenum concentration.
Figure 5
Figure 5
(a) Elemental mapping of 67.5W-22.5Mo-7Ni-3Fe, (b) elemental mapping of 45W-45Mo-7Ni-3Fe.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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