The Effect of Initial Annealing Microstructures on the Forming Characteristics of Ti–4Al–2V Titanium Alloy

In this study, the effect of initial annealing microstructure of Ti–4Al–2V (TA17) alloy on forming characteristic was studied, so as to provide a basis for quality control of plastic forming of titanium alloy parts. The titanium alloy always undergoes annealing treatment before forming, due to different microstructures present different mechanical properties. The TA17 with different microstructures are obtained by means of various annealing treatment temperatures. The tensile behavior of TA17 is investigated at room temperature and 900 °C under constant strain rate of 0.01 s−1. The experimental results show that the mechanical properties of TA17 are sensitive to the initial microstructure before deformation. The microstructure of TA17 at 850 °C (2 h) is the equiaxed primary α-phase after the annealing process. It exhibits good plasticity at room temperature. This phenomenon is also confirmed from fracture morphology from the scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis. At 900 °C, which is a high tensile temperature, the alloy with equiaxed primary α-phase performs outstanding plasticity compared with other microstructures. This work establishes a good understanding on the relationship between the mechanical properties and microstructures of TA17 at a wide temperature range.