Junheng Gao

Segregation mediated heterogeneous structure in a metastable β titanium alloy with a superior combination of strength and ductility

In β titanium alloys, the β stabilizers segregate easily and considerable effort has been devoted to alleviate/eliminate the segregation. In this work, instead of addressing the segregation problems, the segregation was utilized to develop a novel microstructure consisting of a nanometre-grained duplex (α+β) structure and micrometre scale β phase with superior mechanical properties. An as-cast Ti-9Mo-6W alloy exhibited segregation of Mo and W at the tens of micrometre scale. This was subjected to cold rolling and flash annealing at 820 oC for 2 and 5 mins. The solidification segregation of Mo and W leads to a locally different microstructure after cold rolling (i.e., nanostructured β phase in the regions rich in Mo and W and plate-like martensite and β phase in regions relatively poor in Mo and W), which play a decisive role in the formation of the heterogeneous microstructure. Tensile tests showed that this alloy exhibited a superior combination of high yield strength (692 MPa), high tensile strength (1115 MPa), high work hardening rate and large uniform elongation (33.5%). More importantly, the new technique proposed in this work could be potentially applicable to other alloy systems with segregation problems.

Thermal Stability of Cryomilled Mg Alloy Powder

In this paper, the thermal stability of cryomilled nanocrystalline (NC) AZ31 powder was evaluated by annealing at elevated temperature ranging from 350 to 450 °C. The results show the NC AZ31 powder exhibited excellent thermal stability during short anneals at 350–450 °C, and the mechanisms were investigated in detail. There were two separate growth stages with a transition point at around 400 °C. More specifically, between 350 and 400 °C, NC Mg grains were stable at approximately 32 nm, even after 1 h annealing. At 450 °C, the nano grains grew to 37 nm in the first 5 min and grew quickly to approximately 60 nm after 15 min. However, the grain growth was limited when the annealing time was increased to 60 min. The average grain size remained stable less than approximately 60 nm even after long anneals at temperatures as high as 450 °C (0.78 T/TM), indicating an outstanding degree of grain size stability. This excellent thermal stability can be mainly attributed to solute drag and Zener pinning.