“…The dependence of the hardness has a maximum at 0.5 wt. % FS attaining a value of 160 ± 4 HB, which is higher than the majority of the data reported earlier for any Cu-C composites [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]. A further increase of FS concentration leads to the hardness falling down to 75 HB that may be explained by increase of Cu-boundaries quantity and appearance of soft FS agglomerates due to its inhomogeneous distribution.…”