High-temperature anisotropic behaviors and microstructure evolution mechanisms of a near-α Ti-alloy sheet

The high-temperature anisotropy and microstructure evolution mechanisms of the rolled TA32 titanium alloy sheet were studied. The hot deformation behaviors of the TA32 sheet along the rolling direction (RD), diagonal direction (DD), and transverse direction (TD) were studied by the uniaxial tensile tests in the temperature range of 700–900 °C and the strain rate range of 0.0001–0.1 s^-1. The anisotropic coefficients were calculated by interrupted tensile tests. The microstructure and texture characteristics were observed by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) characterization. The effects of dislocation slip, texture evolution, dynamic recrystallization (DRX), and grain morphology on high-temperature anisotropy were comprehensively studied. Results show that the TD sample exhibited the largest peak strength and the DD sample displayed the highest elongation. The r-values decreased with increasing temperature and decreasing strain rate, and increased with increasing strain. The dominant dislocation slip modes of RD, DD, and TD samples were prismatic slip, the coupling of basal and prismatic slips, and pyramidal slips, respectively. The DRX mechanism of TA32 titanium alloy during hot deformation was the combined effects of DDRX (discontinuous dynamic recrystallization) and CDRX (continuous dynamic recrystallization), and DDRX could weaken the anisotropy. The grain growth and refinement caused by thermal effect and DRX led to the decrease and increase of r-value, respectively. In addition, the room-temperature tensile strength of the TD deformed sample showed the largest drop compared with the initial sheet, which can be attributed to the accumulation of damage and the increase of basal texture in the TD sample during the hot working.