Ductile fracture behavior of TA15 titanium alloy at elevated temperatures

To better understand the fracture behavior of TA15 titanium alloy during hot forming, three groups of experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of deformation temperature, strain rate, initial microstructure, and stress triaxiality on the fracture behavior of TA15 titanium alloy. The microstructure and fracture surface of the alloy were observed by scanning electronic microscopy to analyze the potential fracture mechanisms under the experimental deformation conditions. The experimental results indicate that the fracture strain increases with increasing deformation temperature, decreasing strain rate, and decreasing stress triaxiality. Fracture is mainly caused by the nucleation, growth, and coalescence of microvoids because of the breakdown of compatibility requirements at the α/β interface. In the equiaxed microstructure, the fracture strain decreases with decreasing volume fraction of the primary α-phase (α_p) and increasing α/β-interface length. In the bimodal microstructure, the fracture strain is mainly affected by α-lamella width.