Ti Microholes Potential for Thermal Power Plants Application Punched by WC/Co Micropunch

The use of microholes is a potential approach to enhance fluid flow and heat exchange within thermal power plants, especially for the turbines. Ascribed to eco environmental competition, micropunching is extremely suitable for the mass production of micro features with friendly eco effects. Therefore, the morphology variation of micropunch and microhole during the punching with WC/Co micropunches was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and confocal laser. Results reveal that due to the optimal joint contribution of WC and Co, the formed microholes satisfy with the practical requirements in the quasi stable period. Moreover, the serious wear of micropunch occurs with the wear loss both of Co and WC when the punching number exceeds 1525. With the further increment in punching numbers, the dominant factors of the wear loss would mainly rely on the easily peeled off WC due to the serious loss of Co. In addition, the microholes can be adequately processed after about 30 min by natural sand grains. The quality of the hole would decrease with further increase in processing time and sand accumulation becomes severe.