Friction Stir Processing of Investment-Cast Ti-6Al-4V: Microstructure and Properties

Investment-cast titanium components are becoming increasingly common in the aerospace industry due to the ability to produce large, complex, one-piece components that were previously fabricated by mechanically fastening multiple pieces together. The fabricated components are labor-intensive and the fastener holes are stress concentrators and prime sites for fatigue crack initiation. The castings are typically hot-isostatically-pressed (HIP) to close internal porosity, but have a coarse, fully lamellar structure that has low resistance to fatigue crack initiation. The as-cast + HIP material exhibited 1- to 1.5-mm prior β grains containing a fully lamellar α + β microstructure consistent with slow cooling from above the β transus. Friction stir processing (FSP) was used to locally modify the microstructure on the surface of an investment-cast Ti-6Al-4V plate. Friction stir processing converted the as-cast microstructure to fine (1- to 2-μm) equiaxed α grains. Using micropillars created with a dual-beam focused ion beam device, it was found that the fine-grained equiaxed structure has about a 12 pct higher compressive yield stress. In wrought products, higher strength conditions are more resistant to fatigue crack initiation, while the coarse lamellar microstructure in the base material has better fatigue crack growth resistance. In combination, these two microstructures can increase the fatigue life of titanium alloy castings by increasing the number of cycles prior to crack initiation while retaining the same low-crack growth rates of the colony microstructure in the remainder of the component. In the current study, high-cycle fatigue testing of investment-cast Ti-6Al-4V was performed on four-point bend specimens. Early results show that FSP can increase fatigue strength dramatically. This article is based on a presentation given in the symposium entitled “Materials Behavior: Far from Equilibrium” as part of the Golden Jubilee Celebration of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, which occurred December 15–16, 2006 in Mumbai, India.