Hiromi Miura

High Cycle Fatigue Properties of Multi-Directionally Forged Commercial Purity Grade 2 Ti Plate

Tension-tension fatigue tests were conducted using ultrafine-grained commercially pure Titanium (Ti) plates fabricated by multi-directional forging (MDFing). The MDFed pure Ti plates with the thickness of 1 mm were developed aiming at dental implant application. The fatigue properties of MDFed pure Ti plates were superior to those of the conventional rolled pure Ti plates. The higher fatigue strengths in MDFed plates could be attributed to the much finer grains evolved by MDFing. Fatigue crack initiated from specimen surface, when number of cycles to failure was shorter than 106 cycles. In the high cycle fatigue (HCF) region, however, subsurface crack initiation with typical fish-eye feature was recognized in the MDFed pure Ti plate in spite of the thin thickness. Fractographic analyses revealed that no inclusion existed at the center of fish-eye. The subsurface crack initiation mechanism could be related to the inhomogeneity of microstructure with some coarse grains in the inner part of the plate.

Non-destructive and three-dimensional measurement of local strain development during tensile deformation in an aluminium alloy

Anisotropy of mechanical responses depending on crystallographic orientation causes inhomogeneous deformation on the mesoscopic scale (grain size scale). Investigation of the local plastic strain development is important for discussing recrystallization mechanisms, because the sites with higher local plastic strain may act as potential nucleation sites for recrystallization. Recently, high-resolution X-ray tomography, which is non-destructive inspection method, has been utilized for observation of the materials structure. In synchrotron radiation X-ray tomography, more than 10,000 microstructural features, like precipitates, dispersions, compounds and hydrogen pores, can be observed in aluminium alloys. We have proposed employing these microstructural features as marker gauges to measure local strains, and then have developed a method to calculate the three-dimensional strain distribution by tracking the microstructural features. In this study, we report the development of local plastic strain as a function of the grain microstructure in an aluminium alloy by means of this three-dimensional strain measurement technique. Strongly heterogeneous strain development was observed during tensile loading to 30%. In other words, some parts of the sample deform little whereas another deforms a lot. However, strain in the whole specimen was keeping harmony. Comparing the microstructure with the strain concentration that is obtained by this method has a potential to reveal potential nucleation sites of recrystallization.