Written by an international expert, this book covers the processing, microstructure, and properties of cemented tungsten carbides. It is divided into 18 chapters covering wide areas from crystal structure to phase equilibria, production of metal and carbide powders, and much more. This book is ideal for researchers, plant engineers, and senior level students in metallurgical/mechanical/materials engineering who are interested in cemented carbides. There is no parallel book in print.

Cemented Tungsten Carbides deals with the materials science and technology of cemented tungsten carbides. It is the first book on the subject ever to be written in English. This book is aimed for a wide spectrum of readers including students, industry personnel, and researchers. With 160 figures and 47 tables, it amply demonstrates the ever-increasing significance of tungsten carbide based hard materials. Also included is an extensive list of up-to-date references available in the unclassified literature from worldwide sources.

Tungsten Carbide - Processing and Applications, provides fundamental and practical information of tungsten carbide from powder processing to machining technologies for industry to explore more potential applications. Tungsten carbide 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. It has been applied in numerous important industries including aerospace, oil and gas, automotive, semiconductor and marine as mining and cutting tools, mould and die, wear parts, etc., which also has a promising future particularly due to enabling to resist high temperature and are extremely hard.

Why does someone write a book about Tungsten? There are several reasons and precedents for this, the most important of which is that the last book on tungsten was written more than 20 years ago, in 1977, by St. W H. Yih and Ch T. Wang. During the intervening period there have been many new scientific and technological developments and innova tions, so it was not only our opinion but the view of many other members of the "tungsten family" that it was time to start writing a new book about tungsten. Preparations of the new book began in 1994. further impetus to the project was provided by the realization that in spite of this new knowledge having been presented at seminars or published in the technical press, a general acknowledgement of it by the majority of technicians and scientists is still far from being realized. It is our hope that this book will significantly contribute to a broader acceptance of recent scientific and technological innovations. An important prerequisite for such a project is the availability of a recently retired, experienced person willing to devote his time and talents to the tedious part of the exercise.

This volume contains the proceedings of the first International Conference on the Science of Hard Materials held in Moran, Wyoming, Aug. 23-28, 1981. The objective of the conference was to review and advance the state of knowledge of the basic physical and chemical properties of hard materials and show how these properties influence performance in a variety of applications. To this end, the 49 con tributed papers and the four keynote papers by Prof. Fischmeister and Drs. Hintermann, Exner and Almond, present an excellent overview of the state of the art in the "science" of hard materials. The contents of these proceedings also reflect the fact that hard metal technology is now well matured and several aspects of the behavior of these materials are well understood and firmly established. Structure-property relationships in this class of materials are currently well known. Pitfalls in some of the traditional test methods have been recognized and new test methods are being developed which discriminate between intrinsic material properties and flaw content and distribution. Application of fracture mechanics, al though a late corner to the hard materials area (as compared to other structural materials), is rapidly gaining acceptance and new fracture toughness test methods are being developed. Application of modern analysis and analytical techniques to these materials has begun and entirely new and unexpected information has been obtained. For a variety of reasons, "hard metals" have dominated the research and development scene of "hard materials".

This book is an attempt to explain hardness measurements of metals in terms of some of their more basic physical properties. The intention is to provide, for physicists, engineers, and metallurgists, a better understanding of what hardness means and what hardness measurements imply. The author emphasises the physical concepts involved, so that non-mathematical readers can grasp and appreciate the general physical picture without needing to follow the more detailed mathematical treatment.