Investigation of the effect of sintering process parameters on the corrosion, wear and hardness of W–Cu composite

In this study, tungsten–copper (W–Cu) composite was fabricated using the sintering process to examine the corrosion, wear and hardness of the fabricated samples at three different temperatures of 1050, 1150 and 1300 °C. The potentiodynamic polarization behavior of the composite samples was evaluated in 3.5% NaCl solution containing different benzotriazole inhibitors. Finally, the microstructure of the W–Cu composite was examined by SEM, TEM, XRD and EDS analyses. The XRD results on the milled samples showed that the optimal conditions were obtained with a ball to powder ratio of 16:1 and a milling time of 15 h, so that the crystals with a size of 16.76 nm were obtained. Also, the highest hardness (185 HV) and relative density (97.34%) were obtained in the samples sintered at 1300 °C. With increasing the wear force, the work hardening increased in the mechanically mixed layer, which led to a rise in the wear rate and a decrease in the friction coefficient. The corrosion behavior of the composite indicated that by addition of 200 ppm inhibitor in the corrosion solution, the corrosion current density decreased from 3.73 to 0.59 μA/cm² and the corrosion potential improved from − 630.46 to − 336.28 mV_SCE.