Effect of stress relaxation on the evolution of residual stress during heat treatment of Ti-6Al-4V

Titanium alloys, such as Ti-6Al-4V, are extensively used in critical aerospace applications. Heat treatments are often conducted during forging processes to produce final microstructures which exhibit advantageous mechanical properties. However, high thermal gradients present during processing may lead to the generation of undesirable levels of residual stress. Stress relief can be achieved by conducting aging or annealing treatments at elevated temperatures, yet there is limited quantitative understanding of how holding temperature affects the evolution of residual stress. Stress relaxation testing was conducted between 500-750°C and the resulting response was modified to describe creep strain. This was implemented in DEFORM™ finite element analysis software to model the evolution of residual stress during solution treatment followed by aging between 500-750°C, with comparison against solutions which did not consider creep strain. Stress relaxation phenomena was found to have an important impact on the reduction of residual stress and needs to be considered when carrying out thermo-mechanical processing at elevated temperatures