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Tuesday, June 9, 2009 - 5:00 PM
TAL2.7

Novel Heat-Treatments for the Production of Refined Microstructures In Alpha/Beta Titanium Alloys

P. C. Collins, Quad City Manufacturing Lab, Rock Island, IL; J. Orsborn, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH; H. L. Fraser, Center for Accelerated Maturation of Materials, Columbus, OH

High strength α/β Ti alloys often involve sub-solvus thermo-mechanical processing to effect a duplex, equaixed alpha/transformed beta, microstructure. There are, however, significant advantages to be accrued from effecting such high strengths in alloys with a microstructure consisting either of Widmanstätten alpha plates in either the colony or basketweave forms. The coarseness of the microstructural features and the significant volume fraction of allotriomorphic alpha phase precipitated along prior beta grain boundaries limit the strength that can be achieved in these alloys with these microstructures when conventionally processed, i.e., solution heat-treatment in the beta phase field followed by cooling to room temperature followed by a sub-solvus annealing/aging treatment. This paper describes a new heat-treatment process that produces a refined distribution of Widmanstätten alpha plates with minimal grain boundary alpha phase which results in very high strengths (e.g., yield strengths ≈1200MPa) in alloys such as Ti-6-4 and Ti-6-2-2-2-2. The use of far from equilibrium processing routes will also be explored.

Summary: Overview of progress made to develop novel methods to produce refined microstructures in Ti-based alloys, thus affecting the properties.