Constitutive behaviour of WC–Co materials with different grain size sintered under load

The deformation during sintering under an applied uniaxial load was investigated experimentally for two WC-Co cemented carbides with different grain size. The lower applied loads changed only the relative magnitude of axial and radial shrinkages, whereas the higher loads also affected the volumetric strain. Local maxima in shrinkage rate were found at relative densities close to 0.8 for all sintering conditions. The constitutive parameters uniaxial viscosity, Poisson's ratio and sintering stress were empirically modelled as functions of temperature and relative density.