Rapid in-situ reaction synthesis of novel TiC and carbon nanotubes reinforced titanium matrix composites

In-situ TiC and remained multi-walled carbon nanotubes（MWCNTs） reinforced Ti composites were synthesized using vacuum hot-press sintering and hot rolling. The effect of weight fraction of MWCNTs on microstructural evolution and mechanical properties of the Ti composites was investigated. The results indicated that both proportion and particle size of TiC increased in proportion to MWCNTs content, which resulted in different matrix microstructure, and the grains were obviously refined after rolling deformation. The hardness tests indicated that MWCNTs addition could make the composites harden, and 18.4%improvement in hardness was obtained after hot rolling. The significant improvement in both strength and hardness could be attributed to grain refinement, solid solution strengthening of carbon and dispersion strengthening of TiC particles and remained MWCNTs. A good combination of strength and ductility were achieved in Ti–1 wt% MWCNTs composites, which were in accordance with the uniform distribution of smaller-sized TiC particles in Ti matrix.

Insight into the formation mechanism and interaction of matrix/TiB whisker textures and their synergistic effect on property anisotropy in titanium matrix composites

Considerable studies on processed pure titanium and titanium alloys have proved the possibility of prop-erty anisotropy induced by crystallographic textures,but limited information is available for the intrinsic coupling of matrix and reinforcement textures and their synergistic effect on property anisotropy in tita-nium matrix composite(TMCs).In the present work,an advanced EBSD/EDS coupling method was used to investigate the formation mechanism of primaryαand secondaryαtextures in the matrix alloy.It is revealed for the first time that the reinforcement TiB_(w)displays a{100}<010>texture after hot rolling and has little effect on the matrix texture component but weakens texture intensity.Significant anisotropies in the tensile strength and ductility can be all noted at room and high-temperatures,which is the syn-ergistic effect of the matrix texture and the aligned TiB_(w).The mean Schmid factor of each slip system was calculated to evaluate the influence of matrix texture on the minimum active stress of slip deforma-tion in the different tensile directions.The analysis shows that the strong T-type matrix texture results in higher strength but lower ductility when loaded in the transverse direction.Moreover,a generalized shear-lag model was modified to quantitatively evaluate the strengthening contribution of aligned TiB_(w),which decreases with increasing off-axis angle and test temperature.A new parameter,defined as the critical aspect ratio of the off-axis whisker,was proposed to rationalize why the TiB_(w) failure mechanism converts from TiB_(w) fracture to TiB_(w)/matrix interfacial debonding with increasing off-axis angle and test temperature.