Dwell Fatigue Behavior of Two-Phase Ti-6Al-4V Alloy at Moderate Temperature

Abstract

Fatigue life of titanium and titanium alloys is frequently reduced if the load holds at the maximum stress are introduced, which is termed dwell debit. Many factors affect dwell fatigue of titanium alloys, like stress state, level and ratio, alloy chemistry, microstructure and microtexture, holding time and temperature. Dwell sensitivity of titanium alloys is usually attributed to the phenomenon of load shedding, which is a time-dependent redistribution of stress from so-called ‘weak’ to ‘strong’ grains possessing different crystallographic orientations. Stress concentration leads to crack initiation and formation of quasi-cleavage facets in ‘strong’ grains. Another factor contributing to dwell sensitivity of titanium alloys is time dependent strain accumulation, which is observed even at room temperature. In the paper, the effect of load holds and volume fraction of primary α phase on the fatigue behavior of Ti-6Al-4V alloy at the temperature of 150°C was investigated. Two variants of bi-modal microstructure of the alloy were obtained by means of the heat treatment. Stress controlled fatigue tests with and without hold time at maximum load and constant load creep test were carried out.