Sintering shrinkage of WC–Co materials with different compositions

The composition of cemented carbides affects not only the properties of the finished product, but also changes the sintering behaviour. In this work the sintering of medium-coarse WC-Co materials has been investigated. Descriptions of the constitutive behaviour, uniaxial viscosity, viscous Poisson's ratio and sintering stress, obtained from dilatometry experiments under uniaxial load were extended to cover different material compositions. The proposed models were used to express the linear shrinkage rate, and the model parameters fitted to shrinkage data from materials with different carbide grain size, cobalt content and carbon content. The influence of grain size distribution was also investigated. Finally, the shrinkage rate was used to numerically integrate for sintering shrinkage under different thermal cycles.