Understanding the properties of low-cost iron-containing powder metallurgy titanium alloys

The high production costs of titanium in comparison to other structural metals is the main limiting factor for the wide employment of titanium. Cost reduction can be addressed considering creative fabrication methods and/or formulating new chemical compositions. In this work the fabrication of low-cost iron-containing powder metallurgy titanium alloys is studied by using a spherical 85Fe/15Ni powder whose small particle size and spherical morphology favours both the densification of the material and the diffusion of the alloying elements. The designed composition are obtained by the blending elemental approach and processed by means of the conventional powder metallurgy route. The high vacuum sintered α + β alloys show homogeneous microstructure and the formation of brittle intermetallic phases is prevented as checked by XRD and DTA analysis. Similar physical and mechanical behaviour to wrought-equivalent structural titanium alloys is obtained for these new low-cost alloys which, therefore, are potential materials for cheaper structural titanium components