A Physically Based Flow Rule for the Simulation of Ti-6Al-4V Forging in the α - β Range

Abstract

The aim of this work is to study the flow instabilities occurring during hot forging of titanium alloy blades. In this view, the viscoplastic deformation behaviour of Ti-6Al-4V alloy is investigated by means of torsion tests under isothermal hot working conditions at temperatures ranging from 800 to 1020 °C and strain rates of 0.01, 0.1 and 1s−1. The thermomechanical processing is performed up to a true strain of 10. The flow stress data are analysed in terms of strain rate and temperature sensitivities. A constitutive equation that relates not only the dependence of the flow stress on strain, strain rate and temperature, but also for the fraction of each phase α and β is proposed. Two mechanical models are compared : the uniform strain rate model (Taylor) and the uniform plastic energy model (IsoW). The usual strain rate sensitivity and activation energy values of Ti-6Al-4V alloy are obtained by fitting the experimental data. Furthermore, specific values of strain rate sensitivities and activation energies are calculated for the α and β phases providing thus a constitutive law based on the physics of the α / β phase diagram. The flow stress is then related to strain by an empirical equation taking into account the flow softening observed after a true strain of 0.5 and the steady state flow reached after a true strain of 4. Comparison of the calculated and measured flow stresses shows that the constitutive equation predicts the experimental results with a reasonable accuracy. The above constitutive equation is then used for simulating forging processes by the finite element method. The calculations exhibit the localisation of deformation produced by shearing effects in the form of the classical X shape.