Effect of texture and slip mode on the anisotropy of plastic flow and flow softening during hot working of Ti-6Al-4V

Abstract

The effect of crystallographic texture and slip mode on the plastic flow of Ti-6Al-4V with either a colony- or globular-alpha microstructure was determined by conducting isothermal, constant-strainrate, hot-compression tests on specimens cut at various orientations (rolling direction (RD), transverse direction (TD), 45 deg, and normal) from hot-rolled plate. Testing was performed using a fixed strain rate (0.1 s−1) and various temperatures below the beta transus. The flow curves from all of the experiments exhibited a peak flow stress followed by a large and a small amount of flow softening for the colony and globular microstructures, respectively. Although the flow softening response did not depend noticeably on test direction for a given microstructure and test temperature, the peak flow stress and development of sample ovality did. This orientation dependence was interpreted using both lower-bound (isostress-type) and upper-bound (isostrain, Taylor/Bishop-Hill) models to deduce the operative slip systems in the alpha phase. These analyses suggested that prism 〈a〉 and basal 〈a〉 slip are considerably easier than pyramidal 〈c+a〉 or 〈a〉 slip at hot-working temperatures. A comparison of the flow curves for the colony and globular alpha microstructures suggested that slip transfer across alpha/beta interfaces and loss of Hall-Petch boundary strengthening can account for a substantial portion of the flow softening observed during hot working.