Abstract
Presently, the majority of titanium powder metallurgy components produced are sintered under high vacuum due to the associated benefits of the vacuum atmosphere. However, high-vacuum sintering is a batch process, which limits daily production. A higher daily part production is achievable via a continuous sintering process, which uses argon gas to shield the part from air contamination. To date, there has been limited work published on argon gas sintering of titanium in short durations. This study investigated the properties of thin high green density titanium strips, which were sintered at the temperatures of 1100 °C, 1200 °C and 1300 °C for a duration of 30 min, 60 min and 90 min in argon. The strips were produced by rolling of −45 µm near ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) grade 3 hydride–dehydride commercially pure titanium powder. The density, hardness, tensile properties and microstructure of the sintered strips were assessed. It was found that near-full densities, between 96 and 99%, are attainable after 30–90 min of sintering. The optimum sintering temperature range was found to be 1100–1200 °C, as this produced the highest elongation of 4–5.5%. Sintering at 1300 °C resulted in lower elongation due to higher contaminant pick-up.
Highlights
Titanium is an engineering material due to its high specific strength, corrosion resistance, and having approximately 60% of the density of steel, it can create many weight-saving opportunities [1]
The surface of a green stripgreen and astrip sintered strip viewed under a SEMsurface are illustrated densely packed deformed titanium powder particles
This study investigated the as-sintered properties of direct powder rolling (DPR) titanium strips that were sintered under argon atmosphere
Summary
Titanium is an engineering material due to its high specific strength, corrosion resistance, and having approximately 60% of the density of steel, it can create many weight-saving opportunities [1]. Innovative extractive processes use thermochemical or electrochemical processes that produce titanium powder by the reduction of TiCl4 and TiO2 , or by electrolysis of TiO2 , respectively. Some examples of these extractive processes are the TiROTM process, the Council for Scientific and Industrial research (CSIR) process, the Armstrong process, the Albany Research Centre (ARC) process, the Ono and Suzuki (OS) process and the Fray–Farthing–Chen (FFC) process [3]. Some examples of innovative powder consolidation techniques include hot isostatic pressing, vacuum hot pressing, microwave sintering, spark plasma sintering, etc. [3]
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