Tungsten Heavy Alloy Plate 

Tungsten Heavy Alloy Plate 

Tungsten heavy alloys (WHAs) are tungsten alloys that typically contain 90 to 98 wt% W. The majority of commercially available tungsten alloys are two-phase. Most commercially available tungsten alloys have a two-phase structure, with the main phase being almost pure tungsten combined with a bond containing transition metals and dissolved tungsten. The basic properties of WHAs therefore derive from the properties of the main tungsten phase, which provides high density and high elastic stiffness. It is these two properties that have given rise to this range of material applications.

The most satisfactory current use of WHAs for most applications is the W-Ni-Fe system. For example, 90WNiFe and 95WNilFe represent common compositions. The addition of cobalt to W-Ni-Fe is a common method of slightly increasing strength and ductility. The presence of cobalt provides solid solution strengthening of the binder and slightly increases the interfacial strength of the tungsten matrix. Cobalt additions of 5% to 15% of the nominal binder weight fraction are most common.

Current uses of tungsten alloys (WHAs) cover a wide range of consumer, industrial, and government applications, including:

Damping counterweights for computer disc drive heads

Balancing counterweights for commercial aircraft ailerons, helicopter rotors and guided missiles.

Kinetic energy armor-piercing rounds for defeating heavy armor

Fragmentation warheads

Radiation shielding, radioisotope containers and collimation holes for cancer treatment devices

High performance lead-free waterfowl hunting guns.

Gyroscope components

Weight distribution adjustment for sailboats and racing cars.

Many applications require high weight densities for counterweights, inertial masses, or kinetic energy penetrators, or high radiographic densities for radiation shielding and collimation, and therefore require fairly large volume shapes. Based on high cost, this requirement rules out all but a few candidate alloys, often reducing the choice of very dense alloys to tungsten- or uranium-based materials.

Advantages of Tungsten Alloy Plate:

-High density.

-Excellent mechanical properties such as high damping capacity and high Young’s modulus.

-Excellent radiation shielding properties

-High thermal conductivity and low coefficient of thermal expansion

-Higher high temperature strength and thermal shock resistance

-High oxidation and corrosion resistance

**We offer this material in customized dimensions and properties.

Table 1.  Properties of tungsten alloy ( AMS-T-21014 )

                                                                                                                                                                                                     
Table 2.  Mechanical Properties – Minimum Value ( AMS-T-21014 )