Alternative hardmetals : Microstructures And Properties – HardmetMAP

Hardmetals are composite materials that combine the hardness of a hard phase (usually carbide or carbonitride), with the ductility of a metallic binder. Among hardmetals, the combination WC-Co is by far the most used one. However, the position of cobalt as critical raw material requires its substitution. In the future, applications may need to find different combinations of hard phase and binder that can respond to the specific requirements. Currently, there is a growing interest in the so called “Integrated Computational Materials Engineering – ICME” discipline, which aims to capture the experimental data of materials scientist and engineers into software tools, in order to predict the links between chemical composition, processing routes, microstructures and properties. It can enable an improvement of today’s materials performance, as well as the discovery of novel materials, using faster and more sustainable development cycles. This project will consider both the design of novel binders with outstanding mechanical characteristics (e.g. multicomponent systems, precipitation hardened, etc.), the use of alternative hard phases such as NbC (wettability, solubility) and the analysis of grain growth of hard phase in dependence to the binder chemistry. With this project, we aim to stablish a fruitful collaboration between modelling and experimental groups that covers expertise on production, advanced microstructural analysis, mechanical characterization and physical modelling. We propose to explore the field of alternative hardmetals starting from a fundamental understanding on the chemical and microstructural parameters that control the mechanical properties, and then using this information to “tailor” the composition of novel materials to provide the required properties for a targeted application.