Dgf. Oquigley et al., NEW RESULTS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HARDNESS AND FRACTURE-TOUGHNESS OF WC-CO HARDMETAL, Materials science & engineering. A, Structural materials: properties, microstructure and processing, 209(1-2), 1996, pp. 228-230
Two sets of WC-Co grades were produced, with cobalt content ranging fr
om 3 to 50 wt.%, The mean grain size of the two sets was 2.2 and 6 mu
m respectively. The two sets of grades were used to investigate the re
lationship between hardness and fracture toughness. It was found that
at constant WC grain size the relationship is linear. It was also foun
d that in the low toughness range, grades of equal toughness have high
er hardness if their grain size is finer and vice versa for grades of
high toughness.