Progress on discontinuously reinforced titanium matrix composites

Discontinuously reinforced titanium matrix composites (DRTMCs) are attractive materials for the application of aeronautics and astronautics, automotive and military fields, due to their low density, heat-resistance, and excellent room- and high-temperature properties. Recently, numerous literatures have been published about the DRTMCs, it is essential to summarize their research progress, in order to further comprehend their development and guide the future work. This work includes several significant aspects of DRTMCs: recent development in the reinforcements, microstructure characteristics, mechanical properties as well as modeling and calculation. The present review attempts to reveal the existing problems and propose further research directions for the aforementioned topics. In order to further improve the overall properties and extend the applications of DRTMCs, bringing the hierarchical structures of biological materials into the composites is an effective method. Furthermore, the numerical methods should be performed to study the composites fundamentally and obtain microscopic information of the composites.