Creep induced substructures in titanium aluminide

Many investigations have examined the creep properties of titanium aluminides. Attempts to classify observed behaviors with existing models for high temperature deformation have been met with limited success. Several researchers have shown that an understanding of substructural evolution in the early stages of the creep curve may offer insight into the mechanisms, which control the rate of deformation. Creep deformation has been shown to include twinning, recrystallization, grain boundary sliding, ordinary and super dislocation activity, and faulting depending on the microstructure of the alloy and testing conditions. However, the environments that these alloys are likely to be exposed to are not similar to the test conditions in the literature. Furthermore the emphasis of much of the research into this group of alloys has been on the effects of microstructure particularly, the volume fraction of lamellar phase and ternary elemental additions. With all of these studies little information is available on the deformation behavior of the gamma phase. The alloys in these studies are mostly composed of the gamma phase and yet its creep behavior is not well understood. For this reason single phase binary gamma titanium aluminides were investigated in this study.; To understand the effects of aluminum, interstitial oxygen content, and stress on creep, five alloys of varying Al concentrations and interstitial oxygen contents were deformed at temperatures ranging from 700–800°C and at stresses of 150, 200, and 250MPa. Full creep curves were developed under these conditions and phenomenological parameters for creep were calculated from these data. Additional tests were interrupted during primary and secondary creep at 760°C. Specimens from the interrupted tests as well as from the as-processed materials were examined optically and by TEM. Creep data and the microscopy were analyzed in concert to determine rate-controlling mechanisms for creep. Evolution of the substructure with strain and as a function of interstitial oxygen content and stress will be discussed. Finally, mechanisms for the formation of deformation twins and accommodation reactions for the stresses associated with twins terminating within the TiAl matrix will be presented.