Abstract. The influence of warm swaging on the structure and properties of Ti-6Al-4V alloy was studied. Warm swaging of the alloy in the interval 680-500°C with the total strain of ε=2.66 was found to be resulted in the formation of a homogeneous globular microstructure with a grain size of 0.4µm in both longitudinal and transversal sections. Room temperature tensile strength and tensile elongation of the swaged alloy was 1315MPa and 10.5%, respectively. Ultrafine-grained Ti-6Al-4V alloy produced by swaging exhibited good workability at 600-700 °C.
IntroductionOne of the promising approaches to improve mechanical properties of structural materials is the formation of an ultrafine-grained (UFG) structure with a grain size less than 1µm [1]. In comparison to coarse grained materials UFG materials exhibit enhanced static and cyclic strength, hardness and wear resistance [2]. Such combination of properties can reduce the dimensions and weight of parts while keeping their structural strength. This fact is especially important for titanium alloys. Providing low density, high specific strength and an excellent corrosion resistance [3], titanium alloys are used in a wide variety of aviation, aerospace, shipbuilding, automobile production.To obtain the UFG structure in metallic materials severe plastic deformation at low temperatures (typically below 0.5 T m ) is usually used [1]. One of the main parameters of severe plastic deformation which can influence on the kinetics of ultrafine-grained structure formation is strain path. In comparison to unidirectional deformation, change in the load direction during large straining can considerably increase both the kinetics of microstructure refinement and the final structure homogeneity. One of the well-known ways to use this approach is multidirectional forging (MF); this method shows particularly good result in case of two-phase titanium alloys allowing formation of a homogeneous microstructure with grain size of 0.4µm [4]. However MF has an essential fault associated with a relatively high laboriousness of the method.More efficient way to obtain the UFG structure in rod preforms is warm swaging [5]. Swaging consists in periodic compressions of a rod and reduction its diameter by split dies which simultaneously move along radial, rotational and axial directions relative to the axis of the rod. In this case the deformation has a quasi-hydrostatic compression scheme. This gives a possibility to deform materials with high accuracy to large strain without fracture.The aim of the present work was to study the formation of UFG microstructure of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy in both longitudinal and transversal sections during swaging in the temperature range 680-500 °C with the total strain of ε = 2.67.