Abstract
The high production costs of titanium in comparison to other structural metals is the main limiting factor for the wide employment of titanium. Cost reduction can be addressed considering creative fabrication methods and/or formulating new chemical compositions. In this work the fabrication of low-cost iron-containing powder metallurgy titanium alloys is studied by using a spherical 85Fe/15Ni powder whose small particle size and spherical morphology favours both the densification of the material and the diffusion of the alloying elements. The designed composition are obtained by the blending elemental approach and processed by means of the conventional powder metallurgy route. The high vacuum sintered α+β alloys show homogeneous microstructure and the formation of brittle intermetallic phases is prevented as checked by XRD and DTA analysis. Similar physical and mechanical behaviour to wrought-equivalent structural titanium alloys is obtained for these new low-cost alloys which, therefore, are potential materials for cheaper structural titanium components.
Highlights
Titanium has superior corrosion resistance in many aggressive chemical environments, is inert in contact with body fluids and has the best specific mechanical properties among engineering metals
An irregular elemental titanium powder bought from GfE GmbH (which was obtained by means of the (HDH) hydride-dehydride process) and a commercial 85Fe/15Ni powder fabricated by electrolysis
The presence of the spherical powder does not affect the strength of the materials which could be handled without breakage
Summary
Titanium has superior corrosion resistance in many aggressive chemical environments, is inert in contact with body fluids (biocompatible) and has the best specific mechanical properties among engineering metals (i.e. mechanical properties divided by density). Titanium is characterised by very high production costs which are approximately 6 times and 30 times higher, respectively, in comparison to those to obtain the same quantity of aluminium or steel [4] relegating titanium to high demanding sectors. These costs are due to the necessity to use special industrial processes to prevent the contamination of titanium from interstitials (especially oxygen and nitrogen) which are detrimental for its ductility [5,6]. Titanium is classified as a difficult-to-machine materials as a result of its poor conductivity [7]
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