Contents

### **Preface XI**


Preface

Tungsten carbide (WC) was first extracted from steel and properly identified around mid 19th century. It has attracted great interest to both engineers and academics for the sake of its excellent properties such as hard and wear-resistance, high melting point and chemically inert. Although it has been known for over one hundred years, recently tungsten carbide has been applied in numerous important industries including aerospace, oil and gas, automotive, semiconductor and marine, which also has a promising future. Cemented tungsten carbide, often simply called carbide, and also called cemented carbide and hard-metal, is a metal matrix composites (MMCs) where tungsten carbide particles are the aggregate and metallic cobalt serves as the matrix. It has excellent physicochemical properties, particularly enables to resist high temperatures and is extremely hard, which bring out wide application in the industry

This book aims to provide fundamental and practical information of tungsten carbide from powder processing to machining technologies for industry to explore more potential applications. Chapter 1 introduces the self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) method to produce nanosized tungsten carbide powder. Chapter 2 explores the kinetic mechanism for spark plasma sintering (SPS) of tungsten carbide nanosized powder to produce cemented carbide. Chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to production of metal/ceramic matrix composites with enhanced mechanical properties using tungsten carbide particle as a reinforcement phase. Chapter 5 is dedicated to the machinability investigation of cemented tungsten carbide, which could expand their application areas by making components using novel machining technologies. The last chapter presents an ultrasonic vibration shoe centerless grinding technology for

The book can serve as an informative reference for academics, researchers, engineers and professional that are related to tungsten carbide processing and applications.

The editor would like to thank InTech for this opportunity and their enthusiastic and professional support. Finally, I sincerely thank all the authors for their contributions to

**Dr. Kui Liu**

Singapore

Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology,

for cutting and mining tools, moulds and dies, and wear parts.

tungsten carbide component manufacturing.

this book.
