Measurement of thermal property for tungsten-stainless steel alloy and high purity tungsten

Kawai, Masayoshi*; Li, J.*; Watanabe, Ryuzo*; Kurishita, Hiroaki*; Kikuchi, Kenji; Igarashi, Tadashi*; Kato, Masahiro*

Dai-23-Kai Nihon Netsu Bussei Shimpojiumu Koen Rombunshu, p.313 - 315, 2002/11

The objective of the present study is to develop the stainless-steel-bonded tungsten alloys by powder metallurgy processes. Commercially available tungsten powders and stainless steel (SUS304L) powder were used as the raw materials and mixed by ball milling at the ratios of 97mass% W -3% SUS and 93mass% W -7mass% SUS. Powder compacts were formed by die pressing and cold isostatic pressing (CIP), then sintered mainly in vacuum at the temperatures above the melting point of the stainless steel phase. Some samples were fabricated by glass-encapsulated hot isostatic pressing (HIPing) at lower temperatures. The microstructural observation was made by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The thermal properties of the produced alloy and various tungsten materials supplied from Allied Material Corp. was measured with the laser-frash method. It was found that stable liquid-phase-sintered microstructures were not easily formed in the tungsten-stainless steel system. The electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) revealed that tungsten was considerably dissolved in the stainless steel phase during sintering. Therefore, thermal conductivity of the W/7 mass% SUS alloy was 22.8-53.5 W/m/K that was very lower than theoretical value calculated from those of pure tungsten and stainless steel. Its temperature dependence is resembled to that of stainless steel, i.e., thermal conductivity increased with the specimen temperature as like stainless steel. The diffusivity of pure tungsten is compared with those of tungsten alloys.