Cost-effective blended elemental powder metallurgy of titanium alloys for transportation application

Transportation industry is one of the perspective areas of application for lightweight advanced materials, including titanium alloys. However, despite the excellent mechanical properties and corrosion resistance of titanium alloys, automobile and other transportation industries cannot afford titanium unless its cost is significantly reduced. Near-net-shape processings, amongst which are powder metallurgy (PM) techniques, look the most appealing ways of cost reduction. Economic potentiality of titanium PM processes depends on the availability of low-cost powder and particular consolidation technology used. In this paper the blended elemental technology by a simple press-and-sinter method has been investigated using various titanium powders, in order to find if this technology can be applied to production of parts from titanium alloys for transportation industry. Main part of work was done on Ti-6Al-4V (wt. %) composition although some other compositions were tried. Chemical and dimensional characteristics of initial powders, cold-compaction pressure, temperature and time of sintering were main variables of the study. It was shown that at proper choice of elemental constituents and consolidation parameters high density of the final product (98% of theoretical) could be obtained. For this case, microstructural investigations showed a phase and structural homogeneity of the synthesized material. This can give rise to the mechanical properties to be comparable with those of cast and wrought material.