International Journal of Refractory Metals & Hard Materials 23 (2005) 119127 www.elsevier.

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Correlation of transverse rupture strength of WCCo with hardness

Zhigang Zak Fang
*
Department of Metallurgical Engineering, University of Utah, 135 S. 1460 East, Room 412, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, USA Received 10 September 2004; accepted 26 November 2004

Abstract The transverse rupture strength (TRS) of WCCo composites is often loosely viewed as an equivalent of toughness which increases as hardness decreases in the industry. The results of this study, conducted using a controlled group of WCCo samples with consistent TRS values, suggest a dierent correlation between the TRS and hardness of WCCo composites. It was shown that TRS is closely related to the hardness and facture toughness. Within a hardness range of 800 <Hv < 1500 kg/mm2, TRS appears to rst increase and then decrease as the hardness increases. It reaches a peak value at Hv % 1300 kg/mm2. While in the past TRS of WCCo has been used as a indicator of porosities of WCCo materials, the result of this study is understood on the basis that these samples are porosity-free because most products of WCCo today contains very little (if any) porosity owing to modern advances in processing technologies. When the eect of porosity is negligible, TRS is determined by intrinsic mechanical properties which are dependent of microstructure and compositions. The relationship between TRS and hardness and the fracture toughness is explained by a qualitative model based on the work hardening and ow stress of the cobalt binder phase. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Cemented tungsten carbide; Hardmetal; TRS; 3-point bending; Fracture toughness; Cermets

1. Introduction One of the most frequently used mechanical properties of cemented tungsten carbide (WCCo) composites is their transverse rupture strength (TRS) [13]. There are several reasons for its popularity in practice. First of all, TRS is very sensitive to porosity levels [4]. When porosity level is high, TRS values will be not only poor but also very inconsistent. Therefore, it has historically being used as an indicator of the quality of sintered WCCo materials in manufacturing. Today, however, due to advances in manufacturing technologies in the industry in the past two decades, the majority of commercial WCCo materials are essentially porosity free. While TRS continues to be an eective metrics of the quality of cemented tungsten carbide products, it is
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 801 581 8128; fax: +1 801 581 4937. E-mail address: zfang@mines.utah.edu 0263-4368/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijrmhm.2004.11.005
*

more a true reection of intrinsic properties of the WCCo composites when porosities are negligible. The intrinsic strength of WCCo composite is functions of cobalt content, grain size, carbon balance, and other chemical composition and microstructure factors. Secondly, because of its sensitivity to pores and other defects, TRS is often also viewed as a measure of toughness by application engineers as well as metallurgical engineers. When a WCCo composite contains signicant porosity, the strong correlation between its TRS and the fracture toughness is easily understood. The pores are viewed as existing defects, of which the critical size is related to critical stress and the fracture p toughness by K Ic Arr ac [5,6], where ac is the critical defect size, rr is the rupture strength, and A is a geometry related constant. But when the porosity level is very low or negligible, the relationship between TRS and the fracture toughness is not so straight forward. In fact, it has been shown that strength reaches an asymptotic value as the defect size, a, becomes equal or less than

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TRS (N/mm 2)

the size of a characteristic value [7]. Further, the exural strength and fracture toughness are completely dierent concepts in the context of solid mechanics. TRS is a static tensile property while the fracture toughness is a measure of the resistance of a material to crack propagation. The relationship between them must be examined accordingly. A notion that has historically been quoted by application engineers in the industry is that TRS is inversely proportional to hardness of WCCo materials. TRS increases when hardness decreases within a range and this trend plateaus when Hv < 1200 kg/mm2 as illustrated in Fig. 1 [8,9]. According to this trend TRS increases with cobalt content so long as the tungsten carbide grain sizes are held constant, because hardness decreases when cobalt content increases. This relationship depicted by Fig. 1 is called into question when an extreme case with pure cobalt metal is considered. Because cobalt metal has much lower modulus compared to WC, the TRS of WCCo composite must decrease when the cobalt content becomes so high that the eect of cobalt metal in the composite becomes dominant. This implies that TRS will decrease when the hardness is lower than a threshold value. The question is what is this threshold value? There is no published study available to-date in this regard. This uncertainty about the relationship between TRS and hardness is further illustrated by Fig. 2 which plots data of TRS vs. hardness of commercial grades published in the Handbook of Hardmetals [10]. All data plotted in Fig. 2 are straight WCCo grades containing no other additives. Although the data set

3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 84.00 86.00 88.00 90.00 92.00 94.00

Hardness, HRa 1st manufacturer 2nd manufacturer

Fig. 2. TRS vs. hardness based on handbook values.

from the 2nd manufacturer shows a slight increasing trend of TRS with decreasing HRa, the scatter of the data at any given Hv is as wide as the entire data range of TRS. When the data sets of both manufacturers are combined, it is even more dicult to discern a trend between TRS and Hv. In short, Fig. 2 suggests a cloudy correlation between TRS and hardness. These may be explained by two categories of reasons: First, the cloudiness can be partially attributed to porosities because these data are presumably collected before the wide spread use of sinter-HIP technology. The second possibility is that there are no simple correlations between TRS and hardness. The dependence of TRS test values on porosity and specimen preparations has been extensively studied and reported [1113]. This study attempts to shed light on this issue by focusing on the correlation of TRS with intrinsic mechanical properties including the hardness and the fracture toughness. The analysis of the correlation is possible only when the porosities of specimens are extremely low and the eects of porosities are negligible. This study examines interrelationships between TRS, hardness, and fracture toughness using a controlled group of samples with varying cobalt content and grain sizes. The relationships between the TRS, hardness, and fracture toughness are analyzed based on the ow stress and work hardening of cobalt during 3-point bending tests. The dependence of TRS on microstructure parameters is inherent to its dependence on other intrinsic mechanical properties.

2. Experimental 2.1. Design and selection of test matrix and samples To understand the interdependence of TRS, hardness, fracture toughness, and microstructure, it is important to isolate the eects of microstructure parameters and the intrinsic correlation between the hardness and TRS. A group of samples are designed with varying hardness levels. Each hardness level is achieved by vary-

Fig. 1. Conventional view of the relationship between the TRS and hardness of cemented tungsten carbide as illustrated in Ref. [7].

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ing grain sizes and cobalt content to obtain three dierent types of microstructures, namely low Co contentlarge grain size, medium Co-medium grain size, or high Co-ne grain size. By comparing data from these samples, it is possible to resolve the eects of microstructure and the eects of intrinsic mechanical properties such as hardness. If the eects of microstructure are dominant, then for each hardness level that will be examined, the TRS values will vary depend on their microstructure characteristics. If the eects of intrinsic mechanical properties are dominant, then there will be a clear correlation between TRS and hardness even when the same hardness level can be achieved via dierent microstructures. 2.2. Specimen preparations Samples were fabricated using laboratory ball milling method and sinter-HIP furnaces. Porosity is at minimum level with porosity ratings at A02B00C00 or less according to ASTM-B276-91. It is important to note once again that porosity has strong inuence on TRS values of WCCo composite. But when porosity levels are lower than detectable levels using conventional methods, it is reasonable to assume the TRS values will reect the intrinsic mechanical properties of the material which is the focus of this study. TRS samples were prepared and measured following ASTM-B406-90. All samples were ground to dimensions using resin-bound diamond grinding wheels and surface grinders to achieve dimensional accuracy as well as good
Table 1 Data table Sample # 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Co content 0.1520 0.1470 0.1674 0.1220 0.1627 0.1020 0.1032 0.1093 0.1452 0.0931 0.1057 0.0923 0.1090 0.0635 0.0818 0.0801 0.1024 0.0610 0.0591 0.1375 0.1030 0.0397 0.0627 Magnetic saturation (emu/g) 23.5 23 25.8 18.7 26.2 15.9 16 17.6 22.6 14.9 16.2 13.9 17.4 9.8 13 12.9 15.8 9.3 9 17.8 14 5.2 10.1 Coercivity Hc 52 69 72 72 83 66 69 101 98 98 122 122 112 130 142 157 208 169 210 321 352 252 268

surface nishes. Surface roughness of a specimen must be Ra < 0.4 lm, or it was not used for this study. During grinding the rate of material removal was carefully controlled by using very slow feed rate to minimize the effects of compressive residual stresses. Ten samples of each group were tested under controlled procedures. All data obtained had standard deviation below 5% except for that when Hv > 1500 standard deviations were > 15%. The fracture toughness was measured in accordance with ASTM-B771 using the short-rod method, tested on a TERRATEK FRACTOMETER. Three samples were tested for each KIc data. The average was reported.

3. Results Table 1 tabulates cobalt content, grain size, magnetic saturation, coercivity, and all measured mechanical properties. The cobalt contents and grain sizes of all samples in Table 1 are calculated based on density, magnetic saturation, and magnetic coercivity data using empirical equations that had been developed previously [14]. Although the cobalt content of a sample is determined by its specication, actual cobalt content of a sintered sample is also aected by sintering operations, carbon content, and systemic errors. Therefore, the calculated cobalt content reects the true cobalt level of the sample. The calculation of grain sizes using magnetic coercivity data is also conducted using the empirical equations [10]. It is noted that the grain sizes and size distributions

Grain size (lm) 3.07 2.37 2.07 2.55 1.83 3.06 2.91 1.93 1.68 2.15 1.63 1.73 1.74 1.86 1.57 1.43 0.97 1.45 1.18 0.53 0.57 1.06 0.91

MFP (lm) 2.07 1.48 1.75 1.07 1.44 0.91 0.88 0.65 1.02 0.54 0.52 0.43 0.59 0.24 0.31 0.27 0.29 0.18 0.14 0.29 0.17 0.07 0.12

Hv (kg/mm2) 935 1020 1035 1050 1075 1070 1105 1225 1160 1225 1300 1300 1265 1335 1370 1430 1440 1450 1595 1645 1750 1710 1653

KIc (MPa m1/2) 20.90 17.71 17.49 17.49 17.05 16.31 16.02 14.30 15.18 13.75 13.20 12.16 12.51 12.73 12.51 11.78 11.55 10.18 10.41 10.02 9.43 9.53

TRS (MPa) 3250 3215 3429 3229 3554 3015 3547 3802 3836 3781 3919 3912 3671 3602 3153 3236 3353 3133 3712 4271 3705 3464 3174

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Fig. 3. A optical micrograph of WC10Co.

were also measured using commercial image analysis software. No signicant dierences were found between the two methods. A typical micrograph of these samples is shown in Fig. 3. Special attentions were paid to examine porosities and abnormal grain growth. All samples have porosity rated as A00B00C00 in accordance with ASTM-B276. No abnormal large grains were present in this group of samples. Using these data, we will rst rearm the dependence of mechanical properties on microstructure parameters, namely cobalt content, grain size, and the mean free path (MFP) which have long been established in the eld. Then, the focus of our analysis will be on the relationship between TRS and fracture toughness and hardness. 3.1. Dependence of mechanical properties on microstructure Microstructure parameters included in this study include cobalt content, grain size, and the mean free path

between WC grains. Fig. 4 shows the variations of hardness, fracture toughness as functions of cobalt content. It is clear from Fig. 4(a) and (b) that the hardness decreases while the fracture toughness increases as the cobalt content increases. The correlations between the hardness and fracture toughness and the cobalt content are viewed by plotting Hv or KIc vs. Co content at various constant grain sizes. The ner the grain sizes, the higher the hardness, and the lower the fracture toughness. Fig. 4(a) and (b), also shows the eects of grain sizes, which are presented directly in Fig. 5. For any given constant cobalt content, when the grain sizes are reduced, the hardness increases and the fracture toughness decreases. This is consistent with the results in Fig. 4. Fig. 6 shows the variations of hardness and fracture toughness as functions of mean free path (MFP). MFP is a microstructure parameter that unies the eects of cobalt content and grain sizes for cemented tungsten carbide materials. Fig. 6(a) and (b) clearly shows the one-to-one correlations between the hardness and the fracture toughness and MFP respectively. The liner or near-liner relationship between KIc and MFP has been shown in many previous studies [1517]. Theoretical models that attribute the most of the fracture energy of WCCo composites to the plastic deformation and tearing of the cobalt phase are also well established [18,19]. In order to study the relationships of TRS with Hv and KIc, Fig. 6(c) plots TRS vs. MFP. It is clear that the dependence of TRS on microstructure is drastically dierent from that of Hv and KIc vs. MFP. While it is known (since Gurlands work in the 1950s) that the TRS of WCCo increases with Co content (at constant grain size) and with grain size (at constant cobalt content) up to a maximum and then decreases, the data of the present work are not designed to examine the relationships of TRS vs. cobalt content and grain sizes directly. Rather, the key focus of the present study,

1800

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Cobalt content by weight

1.0 micron grain size 2.0 micron grain size Linear (2.0 micron grain size) Linear (1.5 micron grain size) 1.5 micron grain size 3.0 micron grain size Linear (3.0 micron grain size) Linear (1.0 micron grain size)

(b)

Cobalt content by weight

1.0 mic. Grain Size 2.0 micron grain size Linear (1.0 mic. Grain Size) Linear (2.0 micron grain size) 1.5 mic. Grain size 3.0 micron grain size Linear (1.5 mic. Grain size) Linear (3.0 micron grain size)

Fig. 4. (a) Hardness and (b) fracture toughness as functions of cobalt contents.

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Fracture Toughness, K Ic (MPa m1/2)

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6%Co 10.5%Co Linear (10.5%Co) Linear (6%Co) 8.5%Co 14.5%Co Linear (8.5%Co) Linear (14.5%Co)

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6% Co 10.5% Cobalt Linear (10.5% Cobalt) Linear (8.5% Cobalt) 8.5% Cobalt 14.5% Cobalt Linear (6% Co) Linear (14.5% Cobalt)

Fig. 5. (a) Hardness and (b) fracture toughness as functions of WC grain sizes.

Fracture toughness, KIc (Kg.m1/2)

Vickers hardness, Hv (Kg/mm 2)

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21.00 19.00 17.00 15.00 13.00 11.00 9.00 7.00 5.00 0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50

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Fig. 6. (a) Hardness, (b) fracture toughness, and (c) TRS as functions of the MFP.

however, is to explore the relationship of TRS with intrinsic mechanical properties including Hv and KIc,, which is presented as follows. 3.2. Dependence of TRS on fracture toughness and hardness Fig. 7(a) and (b) shows the dependence of TRS on Hv and KIc respectively. It is found that when Hv < 1500 kg/mm2 TRS increases vs. hardness when

hardness is relatively lower; and it decreases vs. hardness when hardness is relatively higher. Within this hardness range, i.e. 900 < Hv < 1500 kg/mm2, TRS reaches a peak value at Hv values between 1250 and 1300 kg/ mm2. Fig. 7(b) shows that the trend line of TRS vs. KIc is similar to TRS vs. Hv except for that it is in the reverse direction of changes of hardness. This can be understood based on the fact that the hardness and fracture toughness is inversely related to each other as shown in Fig. 8.

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Fig. 9. Correlations between TRS and hardness within 800 < Hv < 1500 kg/mm2.

TRS (MPa)

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Fig. 7. Correlations between TRS and (a) hardness and (b) fracture toughness.

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Fig. 8. Relationship between the hardness and fracture toughness.

It is noted that when Hv > 1500, unfortunately, TRS are rather scattered with relatively large standard deviations (>15%) and no certain trend can be deducted. TRS of some of the samples with submicron size grains reached values as high as 4200 MPa. The scatter of the data of these samples is attributed to their uncertain qualities with respect to porosities and specimen surface preparations. These data in the very high hardness range are therefore not included in the following analysis since this paper focuses on the correlation of TRS with intrinsic mechanical properties for which it is essential that the eects of porosities and other possible defects from sample preparations are negligible. Fig. 9 re-plots TRS vs. Hv when Hv < 1500 kg/mm2 with a trend-line imposed. Two key points can be derived from the results in Figs. 7 and 9. First, Fig. 7(b)

demonstrates that although TRS and KIc are related, the relationship is not a linear one-to-one correlation which would suggest that one may use TRS as a measure of the fracture toughness. Contrary to that, the Fig. 7(b) suggests that TRS is not equivalent to KIc. Although it is understandable in laymans terms that if TRS is high, the material must be tough, it could be misleading for materials engineers to assume a higher TRS would mean high fracture toughness. Secondly, a new correlation is observed between TRS and Hv within the range of 900 < Hv < 1500. This correlation is clearly dierent from that of the Fig. 1. This new correlation suggests that TRS is determined by the hardness and fracture toughness of the material. In other words, it measures a mechanical property that reects combined eects of the hardness and fracture toughness of the material. Considering that the transverse rupture strength test is a three-point bending test and a specimen fails under a critical tensile stress on its surface, the dependence of its value on hardness is logical. Its relation to the fracture toughness, which has long been considered the factor that determines TRS, should also be considered in the context of a ow stress that is required to propagate a crack after the crack is initiated. TRS is the maximum stress that is encountered during a test. It is noted here that the correlation as shown in Fig. 9 is absent in Fig. 2. As mentioned earlier, the cloudiness of the data in Fig. 2 may be attributed to either no relationship between TRS and Hv or were strongly eected by defect levels because they were collected before the wide spread use of sinter-HIP technology. In light of the correlation shown in Fig. 9, the latter is more likely the case. It should also be noted that the correlation in Fig. 9 is rather qualitative than denitive. The eects of microstructure are embedded. In other words, for a same hardness value, dierent microstructure characteristics may have contributed to the variations of TRS values. However, it appears that the eects of hardness on TRS is more dominant than that of the microstructure

(MPa.m 1/2)

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provided the hardness is held constant for dierent microstructures. In reality, the TRS vs. Hv correlation line in Fig. 9 could be a band that denes a range of TRS values for each given hardness value. However, the general trend should still hold based on the data of this study. Further work is needed to dene the ranges of the band. 4. Discussion The most signicant result of this study is the correlation between TRS and Hv as illustrated in Fig. 9. TRS increases with hardness when Hv < 1200 kg/mm2, maximizes at Hv values of approximately 1300 kg/ mm2, and decreases with hardness when 1300 < Hv < 1500 kg/mm2. This result challenges the conventional view that TRS decreases as hardness increases as illustrated by Fig. 1. This new relationship can be understood by a qualitative model based on the work hardening and ow stress of the cobalt phase. As stated earlier, TRS is the tensile stress at which a sample fails during a three-point bending test. It is essentially a tensile strength property that should be proportional to the tensile strength of the material. During an actual three-point bending test, a specimen would experience plastic deformation, crack initiation, and crack growth processes before fracture, even though the plastic deformation of WCCo is usually small and dicult to detect when cobalt content is very low. Therefore, TRS is dened as the maximum ow stress during the deformation, crack initiation, and crack propagation processes before the specimen fractures. Yield strength of WCCo composite can be given by the rule of mixture as ry rb 1 CV w rw CV w 1

r reff:b 1 CV w rw CV w

where re.b is the eective ow stress of binder. Work hardening of the composite is then r ry reff:b rb 1 CV w or r ry reff:b rb 1 CV w 4 In Eq. (3), the rst term (re.b rb) represent the work hardening of the binder phase under the constraint conditions. The second term, (1 CVw), represent microstructure parameters, which is the eective volume fraction of cobalt phase taking into account the eects of contiguity of WC grains. (1 CVw) approaches zero if the cobalt content becomes extremely low. Eq. (4) shows that the overall ow stress is the sum of the initial tensile yield strength of the material and the contributions of work hardening. To understand the relationship between TRS and Hv as depicted in Fig. 6, we examine the changes of ry and the work hardening term as functions of Hv respectively. First, the hardness of the composite is proportional to ry, Hv = 3ry [20]. Therefore, ry always contributes to the continued increase of the overall ow stress as hardness increases as shown schematically in Fig. 10. But, the relationship between Hv and the second term in Eq. (4) is dependent on two separate factors: the work hardening of the binder and the microstructure. Since (re.b rb) measures the work hardening of the binder which is independent of the cobalt content or the overall hardness of the composite, it is reasonable to assume that (re.b rb) term varies little when hardness increases. The microstructure term 1 CVw, though, is a function of the cobalt content. Specically, 1 CVw decrease dramatically when cobalt content is very low as shown in Fig. 11. The contiguity, C, is calculated employing an empirical equation that can be obtained by tting experimental data from literature [5] 3

where rb and rw are the in situ yield stress of Co and WC respectively. Vw is volume fraction of WC. C is S wc=wc the contiguity of WC grains dened by C S wc=wc S wc=co , where Swc/wc and Swc/co are surface areas of WCWC and WCCo contacts respectively. C approaches the maximum value of 1 when there is minimum amount of cobalt binder phase and the minimum value of zero if all WC grains are separated within the cobalt matrix. In any conventional WCCo composites, the dimension of cobalt phase between WC grains, which is measured by the mean free path (MFP), is in the order of less than 23 l. The cobalt phase is constrained between the WC grains. The plastic behavior of the cobalt phase is thus signicantly dierent from its bulk properties. Specically, the cobalt phase under such constraint is expected to work harden rapidly and exhibit much higher ow stress than it would have been otherwise. Based on these considerations, the ow stress by the rule of mixture can be given as

Fig. 10. Schematic illustrations of the relationships between ry, (re.b rb)(1 CVw) and TRS vs. hardness respectively.

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0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 0.35

decrease as the hardness increases. It reaches a peak value at approximately Hv % 1300 kg/mm2. When hardness is greater than 1500 kg/mm2, TRS values could reach very high values, but the variations of TRS are also high in the high hardness range. The dependence of TRS on cobalt content, grain sizes, and other microstructure parameters is embedded in its relation to the hardness and fracture toughness.
0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 0.00

(1-CVw)

cobalt content by weight

Fig. 11. The eective volume fraction of cobalt binder (1 CVw) as the function of the cobalt content.

Acknowledgements The author acknowledges that this paper is partially based on a poster presentation at Euro PM96. The author is also grateful for many constructive comments and suggestions made by Professor Silvana Luyckx and Dr. Brian Roebuck. Several changes were made to the original manuscript based on their view points.

C 1:03 exp 5f

where f is the volume fraction of cobalt phase. Since the hardness is inversely proportional to the cobalt content, the relationship between the term (re.b rb)(1 CVw) and hardness may be schematically shown as in Fig. 10. Now considering that the overall ow stress and TRS is the sum of the two terms, TRS as a function of the hardness is the sum of the two lines for ry and (re.b rb)(1 CVw) respectively in Fig. 10, which determines that TRS has a peak value as a function of the hardness. At lower hardness ranges (Hv < 1300), the sum of the two terms increases with hardness, while at higher hardness range (13001500), it decreases. This model does not explain the data at Hv > 1500 kg/mm2. As it was pointed earlier, the data obtained during this study within this hardness range is too scattered to enable reliable analysis. Further work is needed to produce consistent data and analysis. But if we view the fracture process during TRS testing as consisting of crack initiation and propagation processes and assume the ideal case when the eects of porosity is negligible, the crack initiation process will dominates when the hardness is very high and the fracture toughness is very low. Therefore the higher the hardness is, the higher the stress that is needed for crack initiation and hence the higher the TRS.

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[1] Gurland J. The fracture strength of sintered tungsten carbide cobalt alloys in relation to composition and particle spacing. Trans Metall Soc AIME 1963;227:114650. [2] Exner HE, Gurland J. A review of parameters inuencing some mechanical properties of tungsten carbidecobalt alloys. Powder Metall 1970;13:1331. [3] Gurland J, Bardzil P. Relations of strength, composition, and grain size of sintered WCCo alloys. Transactions AIME, J Metals 1955:3115. [4] Chateld C. Comments on microstructure and the transverse rupture strength of cemented carbides. Int J Refrac Metals Hard Mater 1985;4(1):60. [5] Fischmeister HF. Development and present status of the science and technology of hard materials. In: Viswanadham RK, Rowclie, DJ, Gurland J, editors. Science of Hard Materials. Proceedings of international conference on science of hard materials, August 1981. New York: Plenum. p. 142. [6] Exner HE, Walter A, Pabst R. Fault distributions in brittle materials. Mater Sci Engng 1974;16(3):2318. [7] Roebuck B. A model for the limiting strength of hardmetals. J Hard Mater 1995;6:115. [8] Almond EA. Deformation characteristics and mechanical properties of hardmetals. In: Viswanadham RK, Rowclie, DJ, Gurland J, editors. Science of hard materials. Proceedings of international conference on science of hard materials, August 1981. New York: Plenum. p. 51761. [9] Bonjour C, Stellram SA, Nyon S. New developments in cemented carbide cutting tools. Wear 1980;62(1):83122. [10] Brookes KJA. World directory and handbook of hardmetals and hard materials. UK: International Carbide Data; 1992. [11] Roebuck B. The tensile strength of hardmetals. J Mater Sci 1979;14:283744. [12] Roebuck B. Notched bend tests on WCCo hardmetals. J Mater Sci 1988;23:2817. [13] Roebuck B. Eect of testpiece geometry on the exural strength of representative hardmetals and cermets. In: Kneringer G, Rodhammer P, Wilhartitz P. Plansee AG, editors. Proceedings of the 14th Plansee Seminar, Reutte, vol. 2; 1997. p. 35265. [14] Fang Z, Eason JW. Nondestructive evaluation of WCCo composites using magnetic properties. The Int J Powder Metall 1993;29:25965.

5. Summary The data and analysis of the present work demonstrate that the transverse rupture strength of WCCo composites is directly related to intrinsic mechanical properties, namely hardness and fracture toughness, when the eects of porosity are negligible. TRS should not be used as a fracture toughness measure. The relationship between TRS and hardness is also not unidirectional, rather it is complex. Within a range of 800 < Hv < 1500, TRS appears to rst increase and then

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