The Kinetics of Primary Alpha Plate Growth in Titanium Alloys

The kinetics of primary alpha-Ti colony/Widmanstatten plate growth from the beta are examined, comparing model to experiment. The plate growth velocity depends sensitively both on the diffusivity D(T) of the rate-limiting species and on the supersaturation around the growing plate. These result in a maxima in growth velocity around 40 K below the transus, once sufficient supersaturation is available to drive plate growth. In Ti-6246, the plate growth velocity was found to be around 0.32 um min-1 at 850 oC, which was in good agreement with the model prediction of 0.36 um min-1 . The solute field around the growing plates, and the plate thickness, was found to be quite variable, due to the intergrowth of plates and soft impingement. This solute field was found to extend to up to 30 nm, and the interface concentration in the beta was found to be around 6.4 at.% Mo. It was found that increasing O content will have minimal effect on the plate lengths expected during continuous cooling; in contrast, Mo approximately doubles the plate lengths obtained for every 2 wt.% Mo reduction. Alloys using V as the beta stabiliser instead of Mo are expected to have much faster plate growth kinetics at nominally equivalent V contents. These findings will provide a useful tool for the integrated design of alloys and process routes to achieve tailored microstructures.Comment: Revised version resubmitted to journa

Effect of texture on load partitioning in Ti-6Al-4V

Neutron diffraction has been used to characterize the evolution of residual elastic strain in grains with different orientations due to room temperature plastic deformation in two plate product forms of Ti–6Al–4V. The evolution of lattice strains has been rationalized using a two-phase elastic–plastic self-consistent model using only the texture difference between the two product forms. It is found that the elastic properties of both the bulk and individual orientations can be reproduced quite satisfactorily, with a C′ modulus of the β phase of 15GPa. The residual microstrains produced are generally greater in the unidirectionally rolled material than the cross-rolled, but are smaller than in Ti-834. The residual strains accumulated in the (0002) orientation are near-zero, which can only be reproduced in the modelling by assuming a critical resolved shear stress for 〈c+a〉 slip only 1.5× that for 〈a〉 slip, compared to the 3× factor found for isolated single crystals. The implications of this for our understanding of deformation in these materials are discussed