The superplastic tensile test was carried out on SP700 (Ti-4.5Al-3V-2Mo-2Fe) titanium alloy sheet at 760 °C by the method of maximum m value, and the microstructure characteristics were investigated to understand the deformation mechanism. The results indicated that the examined alloy showed an extremely fine grain size of ~1.3 μm and an excellent superplasticity with fracture elongation of up to 3000%. The grain size and the volume fraction of the β phase increased as the strain increased, accompanied by the elements’ diffusion. The β-stabilizing elements (Mo, Fe, and V) were mainly dissolved within the β phase and diffused from α to β phase furthermore during deformation. The increase in strain leads to the accumulation of dislocations, which results in the increase in the proportion of low angle grain boundaries by 15%. As the deformation process, the crystal of α grains rotated, and the texture changed, accompanied by the accumulation of dislocations. The phase boundary (α/β) sliding accommodated by dislocation slip was the predominant mechanism for SP700 alloy during superplastic deformation.
A systematic study was conducted on the impact of annealing treatments on the microstructure and properties of cold-rolled Ti50Ni47Fe3 alloys using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, electron backscattered diffraction, and an electronic universal testing machine. It was found that, during low-temperature annealing (400 °C and 500 °C), the annealing time had no significant effect on the microstructure or properties of the Ti50Ni47Fe3 alloy. Only elongation (δ) increased with the increase in the annealing time, and the grain orientation of the Ti50Ni47Fe3 alloy was //RD (rolling direction). When annealing at medium–high temperature (600 °C), as the annealing time increased, recrystallization and grain growth processes occurred, resulting in a continuous decrease in strength and an increase in δ. Meanwhile, it was found that the grain orientation of the cold-rolled Ti50Ni47Fe3 alloy changed from //RD during the recovery and recrystallization processes to //RD after the grain growth process. The orientation distribution function cross-section φ2 = 45° results indicate that the texture was mainly distributed along the γ orientation line (φ1 = 0~90°, Φ = 54.7°, φ2 = 45°). When annealed at 400 °C and 500 °C, the texture of the Ti50Ni47Fe3 alloys was (111)[uvw]. When the annealing treatment was 600 °C for 120 min, a (110)[uvw] texture occurred. Additionally, ductile fracture occurred in all specimens, and the crack origin was located on one side of the fracture surface, with obvious “Y”-shaped propagation. This article studied annealing treatments of cold-rolled Ti50Ni47Fe3 alloys, providing corresponding theoretical guidance for subsequent production applications.
Ti-6Al-4V profiles prepared by hot extrusion are usually accompanied by bending and twisting. The hot twist-stretch straightening is an effective strategy such that the bending deflection and twisting angle can be simultaneously decreased by a single straightening process. In addition, utilizing stress relaxation effect, the residual stress and springback can be greatly reduced by holding the straightening temperature and strain constant for a period after twist-stretch straightening. In this study, the hot deformation behaviors of the Ti-6Al-4V profile were revealed by experiments. The tensile model was obtained by uniaxial tensile tests within ranges of temperatures (500–700 °C) and strain rates (5 × 10−5–1 × 10−3 s−1). The creep constitutive model was acquired with stress relaxation experiments in ranges of temperatures (500–700 °C) and pre-strain of 1.5%. Then, the coupled thermo-mechanical model of hot twist-stretch straightening was established. Based on orthogonal experiment strategy, the effects of straightening temperature, stretch strain, and holding time on the bending deflection and torsion angle of profile were investigated systematically and the process was optimized. The straightening accuracy is significantly affected by straightening temperature and holding time. By using optimized process parameters in practical straightening experiments, the deflection/length and angle/length after straightening does not exceed 2‰ and 2.5‰°/mm, respectively, which is basically consistent with the numerical simulation result.
The effect of annealing temperature on the microstructures and mechanical properties of Ti50Ni47Fe3 (at. %) shape memory alloy was investigated by using a cold-rolled alloy sheet. For this purpose, a scanning electron microscope, electron backscatter diffraction, a transmission electron microscope, X-ray diffraction, tensile tests and Vickers hardness tests were used. The evolution of the microstructures, mechanical properties and fracture morphology of Ti50Ni47Fe3 alloy was studied. The results show that the recovery occurs at an annealing temperature of 500 °C, and the recrystallization occurs at 600 °C. Because of the recrystallization at 600 °C, the //RD texture disappears, and the intensity of the //RD texture decreases; the alloy reaches its maximum elongation while maintaining a high strength, and at this annealing temperature, the alloy has excellent comprehensive mechanical properties. After the temperature exceeds 600 °C, the mechanical properties of the alloy decrease sharply. With the increase of the annealing temperature, the quantity and distribution of elliptical Ti2Ni-phase particles show almost no specific changes. Additionally, with the increase of annealing temperatures to 600 °C, the fracture surface of Ti50Ni47Fe3 alloys becomes flatter.
In this paper, a CatBoost model for predicting superelastic strains of alloys was established by utilizing features construction and selection as well as model filtering and evaluation based on 125 existing data points of superelastic titanium alloys. The alloy compositions of a TiNbMoZrSnTa system were optimized and three nickel-free titanium alloys with potentially excellent superelastic properties were designed using the Bayesian optimization algorithm using a superelastic strain as the optimization target. The experimental results indicated that only Ti-12Nb-18Zr-2Sn and Ti-12Nb-16Zr-3Sn exhibited clear superelasticity due to the absence of relevant information about the alloys’ β stability in the machine learning model. Through experimental optimization of the heat treatment regimens, Ti-12Nb-18Zr-2Sn and Ti-12Nb-16Zr-3Sn ultimately achieved recovery strains of 4.65% after being heat treated at 853 K for 10 min and 3.01% after being heat treated at 1073 K for 30 min, respectively. The CatBoost model in this paper possessed a certain ability to design nickel-free superelastic titanium alloys but it was still necessary to combine it with existing knowledge of material theory for effective utilization.
Heat treatments after cold rolling for TiNiFe shape-memory alloys have been compared. After EBSD analysis and as calculated by the Avrami model and Arrhenius equation, the relationship between the heat-treatment temperature and manufacturing time of TiNiFe alloys is established. Through calculation, it can be found that TiNiFe alloys can obtain similar microstructures under the annealing processes of 823 K for 776 min, 827 K for 37 min, and 923 K for 12.5 min. And the recrystallization fractions are all around 50%. Nevertheless, the tensile properties and recovery stress of the alloys show almost similar values. And based on the feasibility of the annealing process, it is believed that annealing at 873 K for 37 min is the optimal choice to obtain a recrystallization fraction φR = 50%.