Part IV – April 1968 - Papers - The Nucleation of Brittle Fracture in Sintered Tungsten at Low Temperatures

The brittle fracture behavior of cold-worked sintered tungsten was studied over the temperature range 4.2° to 298°K using a high-sensitivity strain measuring system and electronfractography. Similar observations were made on a swaged electron beam zone-refined monocrystal. In sintered tungsten irreversible plastic deformation was observed during cyclic load-unload tests at stress levels well below the fracture stress for all temperatures, but general microyielding could be detected only down to 202°K. For the zone-refined samples macroyielding occurred at all test temperatures with evidence for twinning below -202°K. The fracture stress of the sintered tmgsten was virtually independent of temperature, while the zone-refined crystal showed a 2.3 times increase over the same temperature range. Electronfractography confirmed the presence of numerous rod-shaped and spherical submicroscopic voids which ranged in diameter from 1400 to 4300A in the sintered tungsten; no voids could be found in the zone-refined tungsten. Contrast effects observed on the replicas in the vicinity of certain voids indicated that plastic deformation could be induced by the local stress concentration. It has been suggested that the presence of these voids may be responsible for the low-temperature brittle failure of sintered tungsten. Based m this suggestim und on the evidence obtained here, a dislocatim model is presented to account for the brittle behavior of sintered tungsten. In this model slip, which is induced by the local high stress concentration in the region at the edge of a favorably oriented void, could cause the void to grow to a microcrack of critical size. STUDIES of brittle fracture in bcc metals have led to the well-known experimental relationships between grain size, yield stress, fracture stress, and temperature which have formed the basis for the various dislocation pile-up1-3 or interaction4'= models for slip-induced microcrack nucleation. While microcracks can be nucleated by deformation twins,6,7 there has been no direct evidence furnished by transmission electron microscopy to support conclusively either the Zener pile-up or Cottrell dislocation reaction models for producing micro-cracks in all "brittle" materials. In addition to the "inverse" grain size relationship for yield and fracture stresses the cottrel14 theory predicts that the fracture stress below the transition temperature should behave in a fashion similar to that of the yield stress above this temperature. Such behavior has been verified for several bcc metals.8-10 With reference to both grain size effects and the tem- perature dependence of the fracture stress below the transition temperature, the behavior of sintered tungsten appears anomalous. Early work by Bechtold and Shewrnon 11 showed no apparent temperature dependence of the fracture stress below the ductile-brittle transition temperature (DBTT). They attributed this result to the intergranular nature of the fractures observed. More recent work by Wronski and Four-deux12'13 on considerably purer material did not show any systematic relationship between the fracture stress and temperature below DBTT. The dependence of flow and fracture stresses on grain size is also not clearly established for sintered tungsten. Koo, for example, has shown that the DBTT for sintered tungsten depended chiefly on the annealing temperature and was relatively insensitive to the actual grain size achieved. Using electrofractography and transmission electron microscopy, Wronski and Fourdeuxl3 showed that numerous spherical and rod-shaped submicroscopic voids could be found in sintered tungsten but not in melted tungsten of nominally the same purity. They suggested that these voids could be responsible for the temperature insensitivity of the fracture stress below the DBTT. In the present work the temperature dependence of the fracture stress for high-purity commercially sintered tungsten has been determined. The presence of submicroscopic voids in sintered materials was confirmed, and these were studied in detail to examine the role they could play in nucleating brittle fracture. A dislocation model is suggested which could cause an inherent spherical void to lengthen into a Griffith crack of critical size. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE Commercially sintered tungsten rod was obtained in the as-swaged condition from Sylvania. A zone-refined crystal was obtained from the same source. This crystal was grown by giving three zone passes (at 25.4 cm per hr) to a sintered rod of high-purity tungsten. The rod axis prior to cold working was -15 deg from the [110] direction. Originally the zone-refined rod was -6 mm in diam; it was reduced to -3 mm by eight swaging passes, at high temperatures, with each step having about the same reduction of area. The final swaging step gave a 7.5 pct reduction of area at 1050°C. All swaging operations were performed in a hydrogen atmosphere. For the sintered rod a similar working schedule was employed. Metal-lographic examination of the sintered material revealed that the cold-worked structure had an apparent grain diameter of -25 u transverse to the swaging direction (obtained by the intercept method). In the longitudinal direction cold-worked grains were approximately 1.5 to 2 times their diameter. No distinct fiber structure could be observed optically for the zone-refined rod. The cold-worked structure in the