Tungsten heavy alloys are two-phase metal matrix composites that include W–Ni–Fe and W–Ni–Cu. The significant feature of these alloys is their ability to acquire both strength and ductility. In order to improve the mechanical properties of the basic alloy and to limit or avoid the need for post-processing techniques, other elements are doped with the alloy and performance studies are carried out. This work focuses on the developments through the years in improving the performance of the classical tungsten heavy alloy of W–Ni–Fe through doping of other elements. The influence of the percentage addition of rare earth elements of yttrium, lanthanum, and their oxides and refractory metals such as rhenium, tantalum, and molybdenum on the mechanical properties of the heavy alloy is critically analyzed. Based on the microstructural and property evaluation, the effects of adding the elements at various proportions are discussed. The addition of molybdenum and rhenium to the heavy alloy gives good strength and ductility. The oxides of yttrium, when added in a small quantity, help to reduce the tungsten’s grain size and obtain good tensile and compressive strengths at high temperatures.

The sintering temperature of pure tungsten can be reduced through the addition of small amounts of transition elements. The present study deals with the activated sintering of tungsten with 1.0 wt% additions of copper, cobalt, molybdenum, iron and nickel using the spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique. The alloys were sintered at 1200°C and the mechanical properties and microstructures were compared with those of conventionally sintered alloys, sintered under vacuum condition. The high-rate sintering of SPS has led to an overall reduction in process time and also to a better densification of alloys compared with the conventional sintering process. In both the processes, nickel addition is found to be the best activator, followed by cobalt, iron, molybdenum and copper. The addition of copper and molybdenum showed only a meager increase in the relative density. The alloys, with nickel, cobalt and iron additions, sintered through the SPS process offered much higher density compared with the conventionally sintered alloys. The highest density is observed for the nickel-doped tungsten alloy, which is found to be around 90% of the theoretical density. The microhardness of the sintered alloys is found to depend on its sintered density.

The effect of adding molybdenum to the heavy tungsten alloy of W-Ni-Fe on its material characteristics was examined in the current study. The elemental powders of tungsten, iron, nickel, and molybdenum, with a composition analogous to W-3Fe-7Ni-xMo (x = 0, 22.5, 45, 67.5 wt.%), were fabricated using the spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique at a sintering temperature of 1400 °C and under pressure of 50 MPa. The sintered samples were subjected to microstructural characterization and tested for mechanical strength. The smallest grain size of 9.99 microns was observed for the 45W-45Mo alloy. This alloy also gave the highest tensile and yield strengths of 1140 MPa and 763 MPa, respectively. The hardness increased with the increased addition of molybdenum. The high level of hardness was observed for 67.5Mo with a 10.8% increase in the base alloy’s hardness. The investigation resulted in the alloy of 45W-7Ni-3Fe-45Mo, observed to provide optimum mechanical properties among all the analyzed samples.

This paper investigates the performance of a tungsten (W)–nickel (Ni)–copper (Cu) heavy alloy with 0·5, 1·0, 1·5 and 2·0 wt% cobalt (Co) additions. The alloys are prepared through spark plasma sintering at a sintering temperature of 1400°C following a heating step of 100°C/min. The alloy with 0·5 wt% cobalt is observed to have good mechanical properties in comparison with other alloys. The density and hardness of the alloys follow a decreasing trend with an increase in cobalt addition. Subsequently, microstructural characteristics, such as contiguity, average grain size and matrix volume fraction, are measured and investigated, as they are found to affect the mechanical properties of the alloys. The average grain growth of the alloys varies around 13 µm. As the cobalt percentage is increased, tungsten–tungsten contiguity is observed to increase. The W–Ni–Cu–0·5Co alloy exhibits higher yield and tensile strength in comparison with other heavy tungsten alloys. The fracture surface analysis shows a predominantly tungsten grain cleavage fracture for 0·5 wt% cobalt alloy. The other alloys show more features of matrix interface failure and tungsten decohesion.