Part X – October 1969 - Communications - Residual Stresses and Cracking in WC-Co Alloys

In a recent paper, Miyoshi, Hara, and sugimotoL have shown that hardness increases and crack resistance decreases with polishing time in tungsten car-bide-cobalt alloys. They attribute the changes in hardness and crack resistance to cold working in these alloys. More recently Exner2 explains the decrease in crack resistance with the amount of material removed (polishing time) by suggesting that polishing removes a high compressive residual surface stress due to the initial grinding operation. He cites previous work on steel to show grinding can induce surface compressive stresses but offers no direct experimental measurements to support this in cemented tungsten carbides. In recent work we have observed changes in residual stress in the W C phase as measured by X-ray diffraction techniques with changes in polishing conditions.3 As a result of the work of Miyoshi et al.,L a brief study was undertaken to investigate the effects of polishing and grinding on the residual stress in the WC phase and have been reported.4 A single composition of tungsten carbide —10 wt pct Co was used. Two initial conditions were studied: an annealed condition with about -30,000 psi residual stress from the differences in thermal coefficients of expansion of WC and cobalt and, on the same specimen, a surface ground with a 150 grit diamond wheel. Stress was measured in the WC phase using X-ray diffractometry as a function of the amount of material removed by metallographic polishing with 6 diamond paste. The results are shown in Fig. 1. Two things are noted, 1) polishing with 6 p diamond paste has little effect on the annealed sample and 2) the magnitude of the grinding stress is markedly reduced as material is removed. By the time 0.1 mil is removed the surface has a metallographic polish satisfactory for light microscopy examination. Thus the surface, even though polished, can still retain most of the stress due to grinding. Since WC is itself slightly ductile, it seems reasonable that high compressive stresses can be generated in the surface by the plastic deformation accompanying grinding. Exner2 suggests, by analogy with steel, that as a result of grinding both WC and cobalt in the