The effects of the secondary processes of Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) at 920 °C and Heat Treatment (HT) at 1000 °C of Electron Beam-Melted (EBM) Ti–6Al–4V alloy on the microstructure and hydrogen embrittlement (HE) after electrochemical hydrogen charging (EC) were investigated. Comprehensive characterization, including microstructural analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal desorption analysis, and mechanical testing, was conducted. After HIP, the β-phase morphology changed from discontinuous Widmanstätten to a more continuous structure, 10 times and ~1.5 times larger in length and width, respectively. Following HT, the β-phase morphology changed to a continuous “web-like” structure, ~4.5 times larger in width. Despite similar mechanical behavior in their non-hydrogenated state, the post-treated alloys exhibit increased susceptibility to HE due to enhanced hydrogen penetration into the bulk. It is shown that hydrogen content in the samples’ bulk is inversely dependent on surface hydride content. It is therefore concluded that the formed hydride surface layer is crucial for inhibiting further hydrogen penetration and adsorption into the bulk and thus for reducing HE susceptibility. The lack of a hydride surface layer in the samples subject to HIP and HT highlights the importance of choosing secondary treatment process parameters that will not increase the continuous β-phase morphology of EBM Ti–6Al–4V alloys in applications that involve electrochemical hydrogen environments.

The most accepted method for determining friction conditions in metal forming is the ring compression test (RCT). At high temperatures, extraction of the friction coefficient, μ, commonly requires numerical analysis due to the coupling between the mechanical and thermal fields. In the current study, compression tests of cylindrical specimens and RCT experiments were conducted on commercially pure aluminium (Al1050) at several temperatures, loading rates, and lubrication conditions. The experiments were used in conjunction with a coupled thermo-mechanical finite element analysis to study the dependence of the friction coefficient on those parameters. It is demonstrated that due to the coupling between friction conditions and material flow stress, both μ and flow stress data should be determined from the cylinder and ring specimens simultaneously and not subsequently. The computed friction conditions are validated using a novel method based on identification of the plastic flow neutral radius. It is shown that, due to heat loss mechanisms, the experimental system preparation stage must be incorporated in the computational analysis. The study also addresses the limitation of the RCT in the presence of high friction conditions. The computational models are finally used to examine the thermo-mechanical fields, which develop during the different processes, with an emphasis on the effect of friction conditions, which were then correlated to the resulting microstructure in the RCTs.

The mechanical response and failure of Al-TiB₂ composites fabricated by Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) were investigated. The effective flow stress at room temperature for different TiB₂ particle volume fractions between 0% and 15% was determined using compression experiments on cylindrical specimens in conjunction with an iterative computational methodology. A different set of experiments on tapered specimens was used to validate the effective flow curves by comparing experimental force–displacement curves and deformation patterns to the ones obtained from the computations. Using a continuum damage mechanics approach, the experiments were also used to construct effective failure curves for each material composition. It was demonstrated that the fracture modes observed in the different experiments could be reproduced in the computations. The results show that increasing the TiB₂ particle volume fraction to 10% results in an increase in material effective yield stress and a decrease in hardening. For a particle volume fraction of 15%, the effective yield stress decreases with no significant influence on the hardening slope. The ductility (workability) of the composite decreases with increasing particle volume fraction.