J. Tiley

Rapid characterization of titanium microstructural features for specific modelling of mechanical properties

Mechanical properties of α/β Ti alloys are closely related to their microstructure. The complexity of the microstructural features involved makes it rather difficult to develop models for predicting properties of these alloys. Advances in stereology and microscopy permit rapid characterization of various features in Ti alloys including Widmanstatten α-laths, grain sizes, grain shapes, colony structures and volume fractions of different phases. This research documents the stereology procedures for characterizing microstructural features in Ti alloys, including the use of three-dimensional serial sectioning and reconstruction procedures for developing through material measurements. The resulting data indicate the powerful characterization processes now available, and the ability to rapidly assess microstructural features in Ti alloys. The processes were tested using Ti-62222 by serial sectioning the sample and conducting automated stereology protocols to determine features. In addition, three-dimensional reconstruction was completed on a Ti-6242 sample to evaluate lath interactions within the alloy. Results indicate the tremendous potential for characterizing microstructures using advanced techniques.

Neural Networks Relating Alloy Composition, Microstructure, and Tensile Properties of α/β-Processed TIMETAL 6-4

Bayesian neural networks have been developed, which relate composition, microstructure, and tensile properties of the alloy TIMETAL 6-4 (nominal composition: Ti-6Al-4V (wt pct) after thermomechanical processing (TMP) in the two-phase (αxa0+xa0β)-phase field. The developed networks are able to make interpolative predictions of properties within the ranges of composition and microstructural features that are in the population of the database used for training and testing of the networks. In addition, the neural networks have been used to conduct virtual experiments which permit the functional dependencies of properties on composition and microstructural features to be determined. In this way, it is shown that in the microstructural condition resulting from TMP in the two-phase (αxa0+xa0β) phase field, the most significant contribution to strength is from solid solution strengthening, with microstructural features apparently influencing the balance of a number of properties.