A New Method for Evaluating the Indentation Toughness of Hardmetals

This paper proposes a new method of evaluating the indentation toughness of hardmetals using the length of Palmqvist cracks (C) and Vickers indentation diagonal size (di). Indentation load “P” is divided into two parts: Pi for plastic indentation size and Pc for Palmqvist cracks. Pi depends upon the square of the indentation size (di2) and Pc depends upon (C3/2). The new method produces a very good linear relationship between the calculated indentation toughness values and the standard conventional linear elastic fracture mechanics toughness values with the same cemented carbide materials for a large number of standard Kennametal grades for both straight WC-Co carbide grades and grades containing cubic carbides. The new method also works on WC-Co hardmetal data selected from recently published literature. The technique compares the indentation toughness values of WC-Co materials before and after vacuum annealing at high temperature. The indentation toughness values of annealed carbide samples were lower than for un-annealed WC-Co hardmetals