Abstract
The amount of VC and C/N ratio in Ti(CN) was varied to investigate the effect of VC addition on the mi-crostructural change in Ti(CN)-Ni system. As the amount of VC addition increases in Ti(C0.7N0.3)-20Ni sys-tem a complete solid solution was observed in Ti(C0.7N0.3)-20Ni-25VC system. It implies that the ratio of the dissolution rates of Ti(C0.7N0.3)to that of VC is nearly 2:1 at the sintering conditions used in this study. It was found from the experiments that the system composed of the Ti(C0.7N0.3) phase exhibits a rimless structure and relatively small amount of solid solution. That is among Ti(C0.7N0.3) phase exhibits a rimless structure and relatively small amount of solid solution. This is among Ti(C1-xNx) phases the dissolution rate of Ti(C0.3N0.7) is the lowest. Also fracture toughness(KIC) of the cermet was measured by indentation method. Attentions were paid to crack propagation path to look for a dominant fracture mode and to cor-relate it with fracture toughness values. The fracture toughness was relatively high with the addition of VC content. But the addition of a large VC content reduced the overall toughness of the cermet. This result is explained with the difference in fracture mode.
