R. B. Bhat, UES, Inc., Dayton, OH; S. Tamirisa, FMW Composite Systems Inc., Bridgeport, WV
Superplastic forming is a well-established commercial practice for manufacturing several critical aerospace components made of titanium alloys. Many titanium alloys exhibit superplasticity in the alpha+beta phase field. However, due to rapid grain growth above the beta transus (the temperature at which the titanium alloys fully transform into beta phase), superplastic behavior is generally not exhibited by titanium alloys in the beta phase field. In this paper, we present a new approach to enable superplasticity in the beta phase field of titanium alloys by boron modification. Addition of boron to titanium alloys produces fine TiB whiskers in situ, which have excellent thermal stability as well as good chemical compatibility with the titanium alloys. Apart from increasing the strength and stiffness of Ti alloys, TiB whiskers also restrict the grain growth thereby stabilizing a fine grain structure, even at high temperatures in the beta phase field. Titanium alloys modified with boron exhibit superplasticity not only at higher temperatures, but also at 2-3 orders of magnitude higher strain rates compared to conventional Ti alloys. Characteristics of superplasticity in Ti-6Al-4V alloys modified with two different levels of boron additions (1.6 and 2.9% by weight) have been studied and the results will be discussed. The high temperature and high strain rate superplasticity in boron modified titanium alloys offers several advantages from a manufacturing viewpoint. Increase in the deformation temperature reduces the material flow stress which could be exploited to shape-form Ti-B alloys using smaller capacity presses. In addition, higher diffusion rates in the beta phase at provide better chemical homogeneity and faster accommodative processes. The faster accommodative processes enable high strain rate superplasticity which significantly reduces the overall processing times. All these factors could be beneficially used in the development of efficient and affordable manufacturing process sequences for wrought titanium products.