Inferences on plastic properties and coefficient of friction during simultaneous compression deformation of dissimilar sintered powder metallurgical preforms

Plastic working of powder metallurgical (PM) material necessitates the development of fundamental data such as flow stress, densification behaviour, coefficient of friction, apparent strength coefficient, apparent strain hardening exponent, plastic Poisson's ratio, etc. In the present work compression and standard ring compression tests have been carried out to generate the fundamental data for simultaneous deformation of sintered steel and copper powder metallurgical preforms. The results reveal that the behaviour of individual materials during simultaneous deformation is strongly influenced by local micromechanical interactions at the metal-metal interface. In addition to this, the test conditions (iso-stress and iso-strain) strongly influence the severity of interaction. The interfacial friction coefficients are less than that of the same material when tested between hard tools. The optimal process parameters with higher interfacial friction, which can enhance the solid state joining of dissimilar materials, have been identified. The flow stress of the composite (steel-copper combination) during simultaneous deformation can be estimated if the How stress of the individual materials comprising the combination/composite are known. With these studies, it should be possible to extend the inferences to the major deformation processes.