Creep Behavior of Fusion Zone and Base Metal of the Electron Beam Weldments of a Near-alpha Titanium Alloy

The high temperature creep behavior of fusion zone （FZ） and of a near-alpha titanium alloy Ti-60 has been investigated. base metal （BM） of the electron beam weldments While the BM shows a fully transformed, coarse primary β grains with large colonies consisting of aligned α lamellar, the FZ exhibits thin martensitic α′ platelets in the columnar β grains. The creep results show that the steady state creep rates of FZ follow the power-law creep, with the stress exponents obtained in the range from 5.6 （550℃） to 5.9 （600℃）, and corrected activation energies of 309-352 kJ/mol; the stress exponents of BM exhibit different values when the creep testing stress and temperature alternate. The values of 2.4-3.2 are obtained when the stresses are under 220 MPa or the temperature is 550℃, also an exponent of 6.6 is achieved at stresses above 220 MPa at 600℃. The corrected activation energies of BM corresponding to the stress exponents are 123-161 kJ/mol （n=2.4-3.2） and 344 kJ/mol （n=6.6）. The creep mechanisms of FZ and BM have been discussed in light of the creep microstructures, activation energies and the stress exponents. The creep mechanisms of FZ is the diffusion controlled dislocation climb, the creep of BM is controlled by ＇solute drag＇ creep and dislocation climb when the stress and temperature are different. Transmission electron microscopy （TEM） observations of the dislocation structures of crept specimens are presented to give some supports for the creep behavior of FZ and BM. In addition to the creep mechanism of dislocation movement, the interface sliding has been found to play an important role during creep of FZ.

Interactions between dislocations and twins in deformed titanium aluminide crystals

Using scanning, transmission electron microscopy and aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, we have studied the interactions between dislocations and twins in impact deformed polysynthetic twinned TiAl crystal. The 1/3 < 111] and 1/6 < 211] step dislocations on coherent twin boundaries reveal the interactions of glissile 1/2 < 101> dislocations with the coherent twin boundaries.An abnormal stacking fault was found adjacent to the coherent twin boundary. It has the same stacking sequence but different atom species in the [110] direction with an additional displacement of 1/4[110]in two neighboring {111} layers, and is likely induced by the slip of a 1/12[112](i.e. 1/4[110] + 1/6[211])dislocation.