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Abstract
Ti-6Al-4V alloy has been widely used for biomedical and aerospace applications, due to the excellent combination of mechanical and chemical properties. In this study, a new heterogeneous bimodal microstructure design, termed as harmonic structure design, consisted of coarse-grained area (Core) enclosed in a three-dimensional continuously connected network of fine-grained structure (Shell), is proposed for the strengthening of Ti-6Al-4V alloy to achieve improved performance of components. A novel high-pressure gas milling process, called jet milling, followed by spark plasma sintering has been proposed to create bimodal harmonic structure. The sintered Ti-6Al-4V alloy compacts with harmonic structure exhibited a significantly better combination of strength and toughness, as compared to their homogeneous fine- and coarse-grained counterparts.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) under Collaborative Research Based on Industrial Demand ‘Heterogeneous Structure Control: Towards Innovative Development of Metallic Structural Materials’, and by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Area, ‘Bulk Nanostructured Metals’, through MEXT, Japan (contract No. 22102004). These supports are gratefully appreciated.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.