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Journal of Manufacturing Processes xxx (2015) xxxxxx
Technical Paper
Department of Chemical, Management, Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, University of Palermo, Italy
Department of Industrial Engineering DII University of Padua, Italy
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 9 June 2014
Received in revised form
12 December 2014
Accepted 22 December 2014
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Forging
Titanium alloys
Phase transformation
FE model
a b s t r a c t
Modern aeronautical and aerospace industries must face the demanding challenge of reducing operational consumption and production costs coming from materials and labor. Current trend of engineering
is oriented to meet both requirements increasing the use of materials characterized by high specic resistance as titanium alloys. Hot forging can be used to reduce the production costs of titanium components:
forging in closed dies of billets or semi-nished forms, at different temperatures above or below the transus temperature, allows the production of complex shapes with limited amount of edge trim removal
and machining rework after forging. Unfortunately, as far as Ti6Al4V titanium alloy is regarded, several
material peculiarities have to be properly taken into account in order to produce defect free Ti6Al4V
alloy components. In the paper, an experimental and numerical campaign, focused on a typical case study
for aeronautical engines, is carried out. The aim of this research is to investigate the process mechanics
and the causes for the nal microstructure observed through micrographic analysis. Once set-up and
tested against experimental loads, the model was used to predict phases distributions after both forging
and cool down.
2015 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Forging is a manufacturing forming process involving the application of compressive forces in order to deform a workpiece and
create a desired geometric change. Forging affects the properties of
the forged product material. In particular, forging can strengthen
the material by eliminating cracks and voids within the metal.
Grain structure can also be altered due to the material ow during the process. Thus, forging represents an optimum way to create
favorable grain structure greatly increasing the strength of the produced parts. For these reasons, forging gives distinct advantages
over other processes as casting or machining in terms of mechanical
properties of nal products.
Different materials can be successfully used in forging, ranging
from low-carbon steels, used in the automotive eld, to special
applications materials like aluminum, titanium, and nickel-base
alloys. In the last two decades, the quality of formed products and
the efciency of production lines increased by means of numerical analysis. This approach was made possible thanks to the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2014.12.001
1526-6125/ 2015 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Bruschi S, et al. Phase evolution in hot forging of dual phase titanium alloys: Experiments and numerical
analysis. J Manuf Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2014.12.001
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Fig. 1. (a) HCP and (b) BCC crystalline structure of titanium alloys [4].
Weight %
Ti
Al
Fe
Others
Balance
Max 0.14
Max 0.13
<0.1
Please cite this article in press as: Bruschi S, et al. Phase evolution in hot forging of dual phase titanium alloys: Experiments and numerical
analysis. J Manuf Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2014.12.001
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Fig. 3. Model of the dies with the spring elements (on the right), and detail of the
thermocouples embedded in the dies to monitor the interface temperature (on the
left).
Fig. 2. The 2300 kN screw press used in the experiments (left) and, and the scheme
of the plane strain case study derived from a blade forging (right).
Fig. 4. Ti6Al4V ow stress curves at 0.1 s1 strain rate and different temperature
values.
Please cite this article in press as: Bruschi S, et al. Phase evolution in hot forging of dual phase titanium alloys: Experiments and numerical
analysis. J Manuf Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2014.12.001
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Fig. 6. TTT start curve and transition zone for beta to + -phase transformation of
Ti6Al4V titanium alloy.
Fig. 5. -phase transformation model curve compared with the experimental
transformation curve.
The literature research was conducted paying particular attention to the phase transformation phenomena of the Ti6Al4V
titanium alloy in order to investigate the microstructural evolution
of the material as a function of the thermal history. At the end of the
research activity the authors collected over 200 ow stress curves,
coming both from the database of the JMatproTM Demo software
and research papers. Tabular format was used to model the material
plastic behavior. Using the collected data, the interpolation error for
a given temperature and strain rate condition during the simulation was signicantly reduced with respect to the material model
given in the default software library. The phase transformation
algorithm was implemented using the dedicated DEFORMTM interface for coupled thermo-mechanical analysis with microstructural
evolution based on diffusive and diffusionless models.
The rst transformation was modeled by means of the simplied
form of the Avrami model embedded in the code [23].
D
TTs
v = 1 e
A T T
e s
(1)
where:
This model was demonstrated effective for prediction of transformations in titanium alloys [31]. Eq. (1) provides the percentage
of the transformed phase. A starting distribution corresponding
to the provided Ti6Al4V at room temperature (-phase = 91%
and -phase = 9%) was given as initial phase distribution. The
coefcients of the Avrami model for this rst phase transformation
were calculated by performing a minimization of the standard deviation between the experimental curve of the phase transformation
and the numerical model curve [23]. The results of the optimization
are shown in Fig. 5, representing the -phase change during the
heating stage.
The approximation given by the Avrami generalized model provides a good overlapping of experimental curve (Fig. 5) but the
complete phase change takes place at a temperature which is about
50 C higher than the real -transus temperature. This difference
results in a residual -phase of about 6% at 980 C.
The transformation model was completed with the beta to +
phase change during cool down. The rst approach to this model
(2)
where:
n = 1.35 is the Avrami number;
b is a coefcient calculated by the TTT start curve of the alloy.
The model was tuned on the basis of the results of an experimental study by Malinov and Sha [33] focused on the analysis of a
60 mm 3 mm 1.5 mm Ti6Al4V sheet metal, heated from room
temperature to beta zone till a complete transformation of the phase to -phase. The workpiece was then cooled with different
cooling rates and it was nally quenched by water back to room
temperature. During the process the evolution of the mixed +
phase was studied.
The experimental procedure followed in the paper was numerically modeled by the authors in [32] and the results compared with
satisfying agreement.
2.4. Design of the forging simulation
The above described model was used to simulate the forging
process of a Ti6Al4V turbine blade formed by means of a screw
press in dry conditions. Process parameters and geometries were
properly set in order to reproduce the experimental methods. Fig. 7
shows the initial billet and the forged one.
Please cite this article in press as: Bruschi S, et al. Phase evolution in hot forging of dual phase titanium alloys: Experiments and numerical
analysis. J Manuf Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2014.12.001
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Fig. 10. Experimental and numerical load curves results for the tested conditions.
3. Results
Fig. 10 shows the forging load vs. time curves, as measured in
the experiments for the dry conditions and numerically calculated.
As it can be seen, a good overlapping is obtained proving the
effectiveness of the tuned model. Fig. 11 shows the transverse section of the actual forged aerofoil in case of dry forging conditions
and with press stiffness of 100%. Ten different points, ve at mid
height of the section and ve close to the edge surface of the part,
were utilized for the microstructural observations. The whole aerofoil section presents acicular phase in a transformed matrix: this
result implies that, during the forging process, the temperature has
fairly exceeded the Ti6Al4V -transus temperature. The obtained
microstructure is therefore typical of the forging process, even
if the process was conducted under forging conditions. The
temperature increase during the process is due to two concurrent factors: (i) the deformation heating resulting in a temperature
increase in the billet, which cannot be dissipated due to the low
contact-time. (ii) the heat coming from the friction forces work
Fig. 9. Heat transfer coefcient vs. normal pressure at die/workpiece interface [34].
Please cite this article in press as: Bruschi S, et al. Phase evolution in hot forging of dual phase titanium alloys: Experiments and numerical
analysis. J Manuf Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2014.12.001
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Fig. 12. (a) Temperature distribution at the end of the forging process and (b) thermal histories for the points (a), (b), (c), (a ), (b ) and (c ).
distribution at the end of the forging process and the thermal histories of the points (a), (b), (c), (a ), (b ) and (c ) are reported.
The three points laying at mid height of the transverse section,
i.e. (a), (b), and (c), experience an increase in temperature due to
the combination of short process time, low thermal conductivity
of the utilized titanium alloy and distance from the die surface. In
particular, an almost identical temperature evolution with time is
observed for points (b) and (c), reaching about 1000 C at the end of
the process (Fig. 12). In turn, looking at the points close to the top
surface of the aerofoil, a decrease in temperature is found, due to
the larger inuence of the heat exchange with the dies. Finally, due
to small dimension of the ash area, similar temperature curves are
obtained for points (a) and (a ), with an increase in temperature at
the end of the process because of the large deformation that area
undergoes.
The evolution of the phase transformation has been studied by
the developed numerical tool. Fig. 13 shows the volume fractions
at the end of the forging process.
Due to the increase in temperature determined by the deformation work decaying into heat, a percentage of phase equal to about
15% is observed at the core of the forged component and in the ash
area. It is worth noticing that, during the pre-heating of the billet, a
signicant percentage of the phase transformed into resulting
in a microstructure characterized by predominant (about 90%,
see Fig. 5). Then, during the forging process, in the airfoil areas that
experienced a decrease in temperature, the phase transformed
into + phase with acicular grains, while the untransformed
percentage of volume fraction remained constant. On the other
hand, in the areas that experienced an increase in temperature
due to the deformation work and reduced heat exchange, further
transformation of the residual phase occurred, resulting in an
increased percentage of the lamellar + phase (Fig. 13).
After the cool down of the part, the residual phase transforms into lamellar + phase, resulting in a nal microstructure
mostly characterized by + phase with small volume fractions of
untransformed phase. As expected, the latter phase is present in
larger volume fractions closed to the central area of the top surface
of the part, where longer contact time with the die occurred. Fig. 14
shows the numerical prediction of the nal phase distributions in
the produced part.
4. Conclusions
In the paper, an experimental and numerical campaign was
developed on hot forging of Ti6Al4V titanium alloy.
A numerical model, able to predict the distribution of the main
eld variables, the forging load and the evolution of the material microstructure was set up. Experiments were conducted by
pre-heating the billed below the -transus temperature. However,
a prevalent fully lamellar structure was found by experimental
observations.
Please cite this article in press as: Bruschi S, et al. Phase evolution in hot forging of dual phase titanium alloys: Experiments and numerical
analysis. J Manuf Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2014.12.001
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Please cite this article in press as: Bruschi S, et al. Phase evolution in hot forging of dual phase titanium alloys: Experiments and numerical
analysis. J Manuf Process (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmapro.2014.12.001