Advanced β-Solidifying Titanium Aluminides – Development Status and Perspectives

After almost three decades of intensive fundamental research and development activities intermetallic titanium aluminides based on the -TiAl phase have found applications in automotive and aircraft engine industries. The advantages of this class of innovative high-temperature materials are their low density as well as their good strength and creep properties up to 750°C. A drawback, however, is their limited ductility at room temperature, which is reflected by a low plastic strain at fracture. This behavior can be attributed to a limited dislocation movement along with microstructural inhomogeneity. Advanced TiAl alloys, such as β-solidifying TNM™ alloys, are complex multi-phase materials which can be processed by ingot or powder metallurgy as well as precision casting methods. Each production process leads to specific microstructures which can be altered and optimized by thermo-mechanical processing and/or subsequent heat-treatments. The background of these heat-treatments is at least twofold, i.e. concurrent increase of ductility at room temperature and creep strength at elevated temperature. In order to achieve this goal the knowledge of the occurring solidification processes and phase transformation sequences is essential. Therefore, thermodynamic calculations were conducted to predict phase fraction diagrams of engineering TiAl alloys. After experimental verification, these phase diagrams provided the base for the development of heat treatments to adjust balanced mechanical properties. To determine the influence of deformation and kinetic aspects, sophisticated ex- and in-situ methods have been employed to investigate the evolution of the microstructure during thermo-mechanical processing and subsequent multi-step heat-treatments. For example, in-situ high-energy X-ray diffraction was conducted to study dynamic recovery and recrystallization processes during hot-deformation tests. Summarizing all results a consistent picture regarding microstructure formation and its impact on mechanical properties in TNM alloys can be given