Microstructural effects on the ambient temperature indentation creep behavior of metastable β Ti-5Al-5V-5Mo-3Cr alloy

Abstract

Ti-5553 alloy is considered as a potential candidate for heavy structural components such as landing gears in aerospace industries, that operate particularly at room temperature. For achieving the targeted performance, microstructural modification and corresponding improvement in mechanical properties, particularly room temperature creep behavior of Ti-5553 alloy is of significant concern. In this regard, an optimized thermomechanical processing (TMP) schedule is employed to tailor the microstructure of as-cast Ti-5553 alloy. Typical bimodal microstructure containing both α and β phases is noted to evolve upon TMPing, as compared to its as-cast counterpart, having sole β phase. The size and volume fraction of αp are noted to be 0.85 ± 0.39 µm and 11.7 ± 0.5%, respectively. Such pronounced variation in the microstructural features is expected to alter the localized mechanical properties significantly. To assess that, room temperature small-scale creep behavior of as-cast and TMPed Ti-5553 alloys is investigated using nanoindentation technique. The effect of maximum load on different creep parameters are analyzed and correlated with the corresponding microstructures. It is noted that at any particular applied load level, creep deformation of TMPed Ti-5553 alloy is ∼ 20–64% lower than that for the as-cast one. This is reflected in significant reduction in the minimum creep strain rate from 10−4 s−1 for as-cast to 10−5 s−1 for TMPed Ti-5553 alloy. Dislocation creep mechanism is found to be active for both the alloys since creep exponent for both the as-cast and TMPed Ti-5553 alloys exceed the value of 2. Discontinuous semi-circular micro-shear bands are noted to form around the indents for the as-cast Ti5553 alloy. The kernel average misorientation map for this alloy reveals a lower degree of misorientation and a more homogeneous distribution of plastic strain. In contrary, the TMPed Ti-5553 alloy exhibits higher misorientation around the indent impression, thereby indicating towards the restriction of dislocation movement against α/β laths and hence positively influencing the creep behavior. Overall, the study highlights the important role of TMP in enhancing the creep resistance of Ti-5553 alloy for industrial applications.