The influences of anneal temperature and cooling rate on microstructure and tensile properties of laser deposited Ti-4Al-1.5Mn titanium alloy

As a metal near-net-shape manufacturing technology, direct laser fabrication has a great potential to reduce costs and delivery time and received an intense attention in the field of titanium alloy aerospace components fabrications. However, the laser deposited titanium alloys usually have equivalent strength and lower ductility compared to the wrought counterparts due to their lamellar microstructure. To investigate the responses of laser deposit titanium alloy Ti-4Al-1.5Mn to anneal parameters, various anneal temperatures and cooling rates were applied in this study. Microstructures were examined by Optical Microscope (OM) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Microhardness test and room temperature tensile tests were employed to evaluate the tensile properties of the as-deposited and annealed specimens. Results show that air cooling from the alpha + beta phase region generates a microstructure composed of coarse primary alpha plates and fine lamellar transformed beta, while water quenching produces similar but much finer microstructure. Moreover, higher cooling rate generates more area fraction of fine transformed beta. With increasing anneal temperature, the ultimate tensile strength and yield strength increase for both cooling methods. Moreover, higher cooling rate leads to higher strength as expected. It is worth noting that both the strength and ductility of the laser deposited alloy improved by water quenched from the alpha + beta duplex phase region. The improved tensile properties were mainly owing to the fine lamellar transformed beta in the special bimodal microstructure. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.