Title screen

[References: p. 1956 (15 tit.)]

The effect of treatment by high intensity pulse ion beam (HPIB) and compression plasma flow (CPF) with energy density greater than 10 J/cm2 on the phase and element composition, microstructure, hardness and depth of modified layer of WC-TiC-Co hard alloy was investigated. It was found that the increase of short-pulse (9 * 10- 2 μs) HPIB energy density (due to the increase of pulses number from 3 to 300) led to the fusion of tungsten and titanium carbides particles following to formation of (W1-xTix)C solid solution oversaturated by tungsten. The formation of great number of cracks inside of fused layer and inside of carbide particles allocated below fused layer takes place as a result of impact of power shock waves generated by HPIB at great number of pulses (100, 300). The higher duration (~ 100 μs) of CPF pulse with the energy density of 13-40 J/cm2 provides convective mixing of melt's components and forms fused layer, the thickness of which reaches 8-10 μm (40 J/cm2). The hardness of the surface layer containing oversaturated (W1-xTix)C solid solution with the thickness of several microns exceeds the hardness of untreated hard alloy in 2 times.