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Enhancing the stability of phase in TiZr via

severe plastic deformation
ARTICLE in MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING A DECEMBER 2013
Impact Factor: 2.57 DOI: 10.1016/j.msea.2013.09.057

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Materials Science & Engineering A 588 (2013) 416419

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Materials Science & Engineering A

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/msea

Enhancing the stability of phase in TiZr via severe plastic deformation

Zhibo Zhang n, Ming Li, Defeng Guo, Yindong Shi, Tengyun Ma, Guosheng Zhang,
Xiangyi Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, PR China

art ic l e i nf o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 10 July 2013
Received in revised form
21 August 2013
Accepted 15 September 2013
Available online 23 September 2013

The effect of strain rate on the stability of phase in TiZr alloys that suffered severe plastic deformation
(SPD) has been studied. With increasing strain rate from _ 0.33 to 1.52 and 2.19 s  1, the phase
composition of the SPD TiZr alloys, after solution treatment (ST) at 850 1C for 1 h followed by water
quenching, is determined to be (17.9%), (31.2%) and (41.6%), respectively, demonstrating
a deformation-enhanced stability of phase in the TiZr, which yields an enhancement of ductility and a
decline of yield strength. The present study shows an alternative route to enhance the -phase stability
in TiZr alloys and thus should be of interest.
& 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Martensitic transformations
Titanium alloys
Martensite
Thermomechanical processing
Mechanical characterization

1. Introduction
Titanium alloys are usually classied as all-, all- and
alloys in terms of their phase compositions that are usually
determined by adding - and -stabilizing elements [1]. The all alloys can be treated by aging to yield high tensile strengths
(4 1400 MPa) and good fracture toughness as compared with the
all- and alloys [2,3], and thus are widely used in both
military and commercial aircrafts [1,2]. However, the addition of
high-density -stabilizing elements, i.e. enhancing the -phase
stability to achieve the all- structure, results in an increase in
density [46], yielding a lower strength-to-weight ratio which is
unfavorable for the applications in aerospace industry [7]. Therefore, it is signicant to produce all- alloys without adding more
-stabilizing elements to develop advanced engineering materials
with a high strength-to-weight ratio.
It is well known that, severe plastic deformation (SPD) is used
to induce a high accumulation of dislocation density in materials
[8], which has a signicant effect on martensitic transformation
[9,10] and thus on the stability of phase in Ti alloys [4,5].
Previous studies show that deformation processing parameters, e.
g. strain rate, signicantly affect both the dislocation density and
the dislocation conguration in deformed materials [11]. In this
study, an TiZr alloy that has potential applications as
structural material [12], is chosen as a model alloy to study the

Corresponding author. Tel./fax: 86 335 8074724.

E-mail address: zhangzhibo5@gmail.com (Z. Zhang).

0921-5093/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2013.09.057

effect of SPD on the stability of phase in the alloy, and a

deformation-enhanced stability of phase is observed.
2. Material and methods
47Zr45Ti5Al3V (wt%) (named as TiZr below) with a composition belonging to an alloy was prepared by melting
sponge Zr (Zr HfZ 99.5 wt%), Ti (99.7 wt%), industrially pure Al
(99.5 wt%) and V (99.9 wt%) using a ZHT-001 type vacuum consumable electro-arc furnace. After heat forging and rolling (at
850 1C) above transition temperature of 789 1C [12], the sheets
were heated at 850 1C for 1 h and then quenched into water. The
sheets were sectioned into a size of 70 mm  8 mm  3 mm and
rolled at ambient temperature from 3.0 to  0.3 mm with a strain
of  1.8 at various strain rates of _ 0.33, 1.52 and 2.19 s  1. To
study the effect of SPD on the stability of phase, the SPD samples
at different strain rates were solution treated (ST) at 850 1C for 1 h
followed by water quenching.
Microstructures of the samples in the RDTD plane were studied
using an X-ray diffractometer (XRD) with Cu K radiation. The
dislocation density in the samples was estimated using the Variance
method [13], from the 4th-order restricted moments of the individual
XRD peak after correcting the instrumental broadening. The statistical
grain size distributions of parent phase in the SPD alloys after ST
were achieved from their optical micrographs. The phase compositions of alloys were determined by analyzing their XRD patterns using
the Rietveld renement procedure [14], where a goodness of tting
so1.12 and a crystallographic weighted error Rw o15% were
obtained. Room-temperature tensile tests were performed on the

Z. Zhang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 588 (2013) 416419

samples with a cross-section of 2.00 mm  0.25 mm and a gauge

length of 5 mm (see the inset in Fig. 2), using an Instron 5848 Micro
Tester at a strain rate of 10  3 s  1. The tensile direction was parallel to
the rolling direction of the samples.

3. Results and discussion

XRD studies show that the TiZr alloys suffered from SPD at
various strain rates are composed of phase (not shown here). A
remarkable change in phase composition occurs in the SPD TiZr
alloys after ST. The XRD patterns of the sample rolled at
_ 0.33 s  1 after ST (Fig. 1a) are indexed to belong to and
phases. With increasing strain rate to _ 1.52 s  1 (Fig. 1b) and
2.19 s  1 (Fig. 1c), the alloys are composed of and phases,
implying an enhancement of -phase stability [1,4]. This is
supported by the detailed XRD analyses using the Rietveld

Fig. 1. XRD patterns of TiZr alloys after rolling at various strain rates of (a) 0.33,
(b) 1.52 and (c) 2.19 s  1. The TiZr alloys suffered a solution treatment (ST) at 850 1C
for 1 h followed by water quenching prior to rolling. The patterns were analyzed by
the Rietveld renement procedure.

417

renement procedure, showing a phase composition of phase

of 82.1% phase of 17.9%, phase of 68.8% phase of 31.2%
and phase of 58.4% phase of 41.6% for the samples rolled at
_ 0.33, 1.52 and 2.19 s  1 after ST, respectively. This demonstrates
an enhanced stability of the phase with increasing strain rate in
the SPD TiZr alloys.
The engineering stressstrain curves of the SPD samples before
and after ST are shown in Fig. 2. As-prepared SPD samples show an
increase of strength with strain rate but a poor ductility of  3%.
After ST, the sample with a low strain rate of _ 0.33 s  1 presents
a yield strength of sy 907 MPa and an elongation to failure
f 6.8% (curve A). With increasing strain rate to _ 1.52 s  1
(curve B), the sy (636 MPa) decreases and the f (9.9%) increases
signicantly due to the appearance of phase (see Fig.1b). The
sample with _ 2.19 s  1 (curve C) has a much lower yield
strength of sy 570 MPa and a large elongation to failure of
f 13%. The enhancement of f and the decline of sy with strain
rate can be attributed to an increase of volume fraction of and
phases in the alloys, as shown by XRD studies above. More
metastable and phases in the TiZr will decrease the stress
required to trigger the stress-induced martensitic (SIM) transformation during the tensile processes, yielding a decrease in sy [15
17]. Moreover, the SIM transformation will also lead to an increase
in f via the phase-transition-enhanced ductility, e.g., through
preventing crack opening and reducing the crack tip stress
intensity factor [15,18].
The observed deformation-enhanced stability of phase may
result from a low dislocation density left in the phase, which
results in a low free energy of the phase at the high strain rate.
The (002), (101) and (103) XRD patterns of phase in the SPD
TiZr alloys are presented in Fig. 3, showing a broadening of the
XRD peaks with increasing strain rate. This suggests an increase
of dislocation density in the SPD alloys with strain rate. The
average dislocation density is determined to be  0.61  1014,
3.41  1014 and 4.77  1014 m  2 for _ 0.33, 1.52 and 2.19 s  1,
respectively. This indicates that high rolling strain rates promote
the generation of dislocations and suppress their dynamic
recoveries [11,19], yielding a high dislocation storage in the
alloys. This favors numerous nucleation events [8] and yields
the parent phase with a ne grain size, d  91, 75 and 62 m
for _ 0.33, 1.52 and 2.19 s  1 (Fig. 4), respectively. The formation of the ne grains of phase consumes much more

Fig. 2. Tensile engineering stressstrain curves of the SPD TiZr alloys at various
strain rates of (A and A) 0.33, (B and B) 1.52 and (C and C) 2.19 s  1 before and
after ST, respectively. The inset shows the geometry of tensile specimens.

418

Z. Zhang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 588 (2013) 416419

Fig. 3. XRD proles of (a) (002), (b) (101) and (c) (103) peaks and (d) dislocation density of phase in the TiZr alloys suffered from SPD at various strain rates of _ 0.33, 1.52
and 2.19 s  1. The q is dened as 2/[sin()  sin(0)].

The stored energy of the

Estore 0:5b

phase, Estore, is given as [20]

1

where is the shear modulus, b is the Burgers vector and is the

dislocation density of phase. The low left in the phase of the
TiZr suffered from SPD at the high strain rates after ST will result in
a low free energy of phase, which may decrease the driving force
for martensitic transformation due to a small difference in the free
energy between phase and martensitic phase, thereby decreasing the martensitic starting temperature (Ms) in the TiZr alloys [9].
This will lead to the enhancement of the stability of phase and
more phase retained in the alloy. The suppression of martensitic
transformation through reducing lattice defects has also been
reported in previous studies [9,21,22].
Moreover, the parent phase that is strengthened via a ne
grain size according to the HallPetch relationship may also make
the accommodation difcult for shear strain in martensitic transformation, yielding a low Ms and an enhancement of the stability
of phase [23].
Fig. 4. Statistical grain size distributions of parent phase in SPD TiZr alloys
after ST.

4. Conclusions

dislocations induced by SPD in the alloy. Therefore, a low

dislocation density is left in the phase of the TiZr sample
rolled at the high strain rate after ST. It is supported by the
calculation of dislocation density in the retained phase after
ST,  9.05  1012, 3.54  1012 and 1.91  1012 m  2 for _ 0.33,
1.52 and 2.19 s  1, respectively (Fig. 5).

We demonstrate a deformation-enhanced stability of phase

in the SPD TiZr alloys. The strain rate has a signicant effect on the
stability of phase. This may be attributed to a low dislocation
density left in the retained phase and a ne grain size of parent
phase. The present study provides an alternative way to enhance
the -phase stability of TiZr alloys, and thus should be of interest
for the development of advanced TiZr structural materials.

Z. Zhang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 588 (2013) 416419

419

Fig. 5. XRD proles of (a) (200) peak and (b) dislocation density in the retained phase after rolling at various strain rates _ 0.33, 1.52 and 2.19 s  1.

Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the nancial support of the
National Basic Research Program of China (Grant no.
2010CB731606). We also thank Prof. T.S. Wang, State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology, Yanshan
University, for helpful discussion.
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