In recent years, friction stir processing has emerged as a solid state metalworking technique capable of substantial microstructure refinement in aluminum and nickel-aluminum-bronze alloys. The purpose of the present study is to determine the feasibility of friction stir processing and assess its effect on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the most widely used alpha + beta titanium alloy, Ti-6Al-4V. Depending on processing parameters, including tool travel speed, rotation rate and geometry, the peak temperature in the stir zone was either above or below the beta transus. The resulting microstructures consisted of either ~1 micron equiaxed α grains, ~25 micron prior beta grains containing a colony alpha + beta microstructure or a combination of 1 micron equiaxed alpha and fine, acicular alpha + beta. The changes in microstructure were characterized with scanning and transmission electron microscopy and electron backscatter diffraction. The texture in the stir zone was nearly random for all processing conditions, however, several components of ideal simple shear textures were observed in both the hexagonal close packed alpha and the body centered cubic beta phases which provided insight into the operative grain refinement mechanisms.
Due to the relatively small volume of material affected by friction stir processing, conventionally sized test specimens were unable to be machined from the stir zone. Thus, the mechanical properties were investigated using micropillar compression and microtensile specimens. The effect of friction stir processing on crack initiation resistance was assessed using high cycle fatigue tests conducted in four-point bend which put only the stir zone in maximum tension. The results indicated that at constant stress amplitude, there was greater than an order of magnitude increase in fatigue life after friction stir processing. In addition, the fatigue strength of the investment cast material was improved between 20 pct. and 60 pct. by friction stir processing. These improvements have been verified with a statistically significant number of tests.
Finally, the wide range of microstructures created by friction stir processing provided an opportunity to study the effect of underlying microstructure on the fracture behavior of alpha + beta titanium alloys. For this purpose, high resolution fractography coupled with quantitative tilt fractography and electron backscatter diffraction was used to provide a direct link between microstructure, crystallography and fracture topography. These techniques have been used extensively to study the early stages of post-initiation crack growth in Ti-6Al-4V, especially at low stress intensity ranges in the as-cast material. A limited number of experiments were also performed on Ti-6Al-4V specimens in other microstructural conditions to assess the generality of the detailed results obtained for the fully lamellar material. The results show that fracture topography depends strongly on the stress intensity range and microstructural length scale. In addition, many of the features observed on the fracture surface were directly related to the underlying crystallographic orientation.