Summary: | For decades Ti-6Al-4V has been the workhorse alloy for aerospace sheet applications due to its good balance of properties and the known ability to hot roll it with relative ease. Sheet of Ti-6Al-4V is made by hot pack rolling, which is a costly and time consuming process, due to the alloy having insufficient room-temperature workability to support significant cold reduction or forming. Consequentially, Ti-6Al-4V is not typically offered in foil gauges, since the direct product of hot pack rolling contains an undesirable surface finish and insufficient gauge control. Hot pack rolling also limits the maximum sheet size and annual capacity.
As a world leader in advanced sheet alloys of titanium, nickel, cobalt, and specialty stainless steels, ATI is developing new titanium alloys with improved strength compared to Ti-6Al-4V that take advantage of a recent understanding of cold workability in high-strength alpha-beta titanium. These α+β alloys exceed Ti-6Al-4V strength while being highly cold formable. Cold rolling via coil processing also enables longer lengths of sheet with significantly improved gauge control and surface finish.
Results from pilot scale ingots will be presented upon, including final properties of these unique alloys and microstructure-property correlations developed through modelling.
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