To investigate sliding friction and wear behaviors of WC-Co/WC-Co pairs containing different WC grain sizes, the ball-on-disc test in air were carried out, where WC grain sizes a (F.G.) and (C.G.). The wear volume of F.G. pin for F.G. pin/C.G. disc is larger than that of F.G. pin for F.G. pin/F.G. disc due to higher friction coefficient, and the surfaces after wear test are richer in oxygen compared to those before test. Furthermore, the wear debris, which is composed of nona-scale grain, after the wear test are remarkably richer in oxygen than to those before test.

The behavior of hardmetals under cyclic loads is investigated. Unnotched specimens were employed to obtain practical information regarding fatigue in hardmetals. All the tested hardmetals exhibit an increase in the number of cycles until failure with a decrease in the maximum stress, i.e., the hardmetals exhibit a high fatigue sensitivity. The fatigue strength increases with the cobalt content. Although distinct fatigue limits, as observed in metals, cannot be observed, the calculated fatigue limit stress at cycles is found to be approximately 70% of the flexural strength, and the stress value exhibits a linear relationship with the flexural stress.

In this paper, we show some experimental results of binder-free WC sintered by Pulsed Electric Current Sintering (PECS) also known as Field Assisted Sintering Technology (FAST). These binder-free WC have extremely hardness and stiffness. However, these mechanical properties are dependent on the sintering condition, e.g., maximum temperature, applied pressure, etc. We show some relationship between mechanical properties and sintering condition to improve to sinter the binder-free WC.

On behalf of the IRSF/SIRIUS group, I introduce some recent results from our deep near-infrared surveys (J, Hand Ks bands, limiting magnitude of Ks=17) toward star forming regions in the Milky Way Galaxy (MWG) and Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) with the near-infrared camera SIRIUS. We discovered a rich population of low-mass young stellar objects associated with the W3 and NGC 7538 regions in the MWG based on the near-infrared colors arid magnitudes. The high sensitivity of our survey enables us to detect intermediate-mass pre-main sequence stars, i.e. HAEBE stars, even in the LMC. We detected many HAEBE candidate stars in the N159/N160 complex star forming region in the LMC with the IRSF 1.4-m telescope. Spatial distributions of the young stellar objects indicate the sequential cluster formation in each star forming region in the complex and large scale (a few X 100 pc) sequential cluster formation over the entire complex.