No abstract

Additive manufacturing of titanium alloys is one of the fastest growing areas of 3D metal printing. The use of AM methods for parts production in the aviation industry is especially promising. During the deposition of products with differently sized cross-sections, the thermal history changes, which leads to non-uniformity of the structure and properties. Such heterogeneity can lead to failure of the product during operation. The structure of deposited parts, depending on the thermal cycle, may consist of α’, α + α’ + β’, and α + β in different ratios. This problem can be solved by using heat treatment (HT). This paper presents research aimed towards the determination of optimal heat treatment parameters that allows the reception of the uniform formation of properties in the after-treatment state, regardless of the initial structure and properties, using the example of a deposited Ti-6Al-4V gas turbine blade.

Direct energy deposition (DED) is an additive manufacturing method that allows repairing the broken parts and building the meter-scale samples. However, the printing of large parts is associated with huge residual stresses and martensite phase formation, which can change the geometry of final samples or initiate the crack. The last factor is especially important for titanium alloys. In this work, we investigated the effect of DED thermal history on the obtained structural and mechanical properties of Ti-6Al-4V using a thermocouple. It was demonstrated that printing with long pauses leads to a¢ phase formation, which embrittles the material. Continuous printing with small pauses between tracks leads to the formation of the dual a+b structure. The effect of the texture on the material properties is also discussed. As a result of the study, the specific DED process parameters allow the same mechanical characteristics for as-built titanium alloy and the alloy after heat treatment.

The mechanical and service properties of Ti-6Al-4V alloy parts produced by direct laser deposition (DLD) depend on the thermal cycle parameters. The temperature field during deposition is significantly affected not only by the parameters of the process, but also by the interpass dwell time and length of the deposited layers. The aim of the article is to establish the relationship between mechanical properties of deposited Ti-6Al-4V samples and DLD thermal cycle parameters. Numerical simulation was used in order to establish relationship between temperature field parameter and the process parameters. The nonlinear three-dimensional heat conduction problem was solved by the finite element method. It is shown that an increase in the dwell time between passes from 5 to 10 seconds leads to a significant decrease in the inter-pass temperature and an increase in the cooling rate. This leads to the metastable structure formation of the deposited layers of Ti-6Al-4V that consists mainly of a nonequilibrium a’-phase which hardness is higher than 390 HV. Without dwell time an equilibrium a + (3 structure with hardness of 360 HV and higher elongation is formed.