Institute of Metals Division - The Notch-Impact Behavior of Tungsten

This paper compares the fracture behavior of tungsten rods in three conditions: recrystallized. recovered, and wrought. Notched specimens suhjected to a 50 in.-lb impact load showed ductile-brittle transitions at 700, 4.90°, and 440°C, respectinely. The recrystallized material had an equiaxed pain structure and jracbred by simple cleavage from a grain boundary source at all temperatures up to 700°C. The wrought and recovered material had an elongated fibrous structure and at low temperatures fractured by cleavage originating from the notch. As the transition temperature was approached cleavage was preceeded by more and more intergvanular splitting which deflected the crack front into planes parallel to the tensile axis. The enhanced toughness of wrought and recovered tungsten was attributed both to its inability to initiate cleavage because no pain boundaries were suitably oriented perpendicular to the tensile stress and to its inability to maintain cleavage because of intergranular splitting ahead of the crack. It has been appreciated for a long time in a qualitative manner that the room-temperature brittleness of fully recrystallized tungsten may be alleviated by working the material at relatively low temperatures.' More recently this difference in mechanical behavior between wrought and recrystallized tungsten has been examined quantitatively by measurement of the tensile properties as a function of temperature. In these experiments brittleness has been expressed in terms of ductility or reduction in cross-sectional area upon tensile fracture or in terms of the bend radius before fracture under bending.' This work has shown the existence of a fairly sharp transition from brittle to ductile behavior with an increase in temperature. The ductile-brittle transition temperature for recrystallized material is approximately 200°C higher than for wrought material. An increase in strain rate, small additions of impurity,' or an increase in grain size4 shift the respective transition temperatures to higher values, but the difference between them remains approximately the same at 200°C. A number of explanations for this embrittlement by recrystallization have been given. It has been blamed either on the concentration of impurity at the grain boundaries, the increase in grain size, or the change in texture which occurs upon recrystallization. The present paper examines the effect of different heat treatments on the notch-impact behavior of commercial powder-metallurgy tungsten rods. The change in the ductile-brittle transition temperature for this method of loading and the fracture mode has been related to the different mi-crostructures produced by heat treatment. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE Commercial swaged powder-metallurgy tungsten rods 1-3/8 in. in length and 1/8 in. in diameter were machined to introduce a sharp V notch 0.030 in. deep. To change the microstructure from that of the as-received wrought material some of the specimens were subjected to an anneal in nitrogen either at 1300° or 1400°C for 8 hr or at 1600° or 2000°C for 1/2 hr. The notched rods were then placed in a miniature Charpy-type impact machine and struck at their midpoint (opposite the notch) with a hammer designed to deliver 50 in.-lbs of energy. The strain rate at the base of the notch was estimated to be approximately 100 sec-1 at the instant of impact. The specimens were heated in situ to the desired impact temperature. The microstructures produced by the various anneals were studied by both X-ray diffraction and metallographic techniques. Fig. 1 reproduces the microstructures observed metallographically following a 10-sec electroetch in a 10 pct KOH solution. Fig. l(a) shows the elongated fibrous grain structure of the as-received material. Following the anneal at 1300" or 1400°C the grain structure was still elongated as shown in Fig. l(b) but the etch pits delineated dense polygonized dislocation arrays within many of the grains. Occasionally a relatively dislocation-free recrystallized grain was found growing into the matrix. The anneals at 1600° and 2000°C resulted in complete recrystallization and some grain growth. The grains produced at 1600°C were still slightly elongated as shown in Fig. l(c) whereas the anneal at 2000°C produced equiaxed grains. The changes in grain size produced the expected changes in the X-ray back-reflection patterns; there was no indication either in the as-received material or the annealed material of any preferred orientation. RESULTS a) Impact Behavior. Fig. 2 reproduces the ductile-brittle transition curves measured in the manner described in the previous section. It can be seen that under these testing conditions the as-received