Effect of sintering temperature on the high strain rate-deformation of tungsten heavy alloys

Abstract

In this study, the effect of sintering temperature on the high strain rate-deformation of 93W-5.6Ni-1.4Fe, 93W-4.67Ni-2.33Fe, and 93W-3.5Ni-3.5Fe alloys was investigated. The samples were sintered at 1460, 1480, and1500 °C for 20 min in a hydrogen environment and for 10 min in an argon atmosphere. The mechanical prop-erties of the alloy samples were evaluated by compression tests. Taylor impact tests were carried out using asingle stage gas gun at three different impact velocities of 200, 225, and 250 m/s. Taylor impact simulationswere performed using LS-DYNA according to the Finite Element Method (FEM) (with three element sizes) andthe Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method for comparison of these two Lagrangian methods. The ex-perimental results showed that an increase in the sintering temperature led to greater ductility, which in turnenhanced the plasticity and altered the fracture behavior of the alloy samples during impact testing. The si-mulated results mainly showed that a reduction in the element size of the FEM models led to a more accuratedescription of the fracture behavior of the samples during impact tests. The study also showed that the di-mensions obtained from simulations carried out using the SPH method were closer to the test sample than thoseobtained using the FEM method.