Hot Isostatic Pressing Titanium Alloys
Hot Isostatic Pressing Titanium Alloys
Hot Isostatic Pressing Titanium Alloys
Additive manufacturing (AM) processes allow components to be directly produced from CAD models by
dividing them into thin 2D slices, which are built
sequentially on top of one another. In powder bed
processes, such as selective electron beam melting
(SEBM), material is added by spreading a thin layer of
powder across the build area. A rapidly moving focused
electron beam is then used to selectively melt each
powder layer, to densify the required cross-section
prole, and fuse it to the previously deposited layer.[1,2]
A distinguishing feature of the SEBM process is that the
whole build takes place at an elevated controlled
temperature that is maintained by pre-heating through
rapid scanning of the defocused electron beam across
by SEBM before putting them into service. Metallographic examination of HIPed SEBM samples has
revealed remnants of pores that have signicantly
reduced in size but where the contacting interface area
generated by their collapse has not always fully
bonded.[4] Despite the presence of remnant porosity,
mechanical testing has conrmed an improvement in the
high-cycle fatigue life following HIPing.[14,15] However,
to date, there have been no studies reported that have
quantied the eciency of pore closure in HIPed SEBM
parts with statistically signicant data.
In this work, XCT has been used to characterize the
porosity seen in SEBM Ti-6Al-4V samples before and
after the application of a standard HIP cycle. The
non-destructive nature of XCT has allowed the eectiveness of post-build HIPing to be studied by directly
comparing the behavior of a large number of individual
pores and by quantifying their net change in volume and
size. In order to conrm that HIPing is capable of
removing even worst-case scenario largest defects, the
samples used in this study were produced using an early
variant of the SEBM process and control software.
Specically, they were manufactured using an Arcam
S12 machine and a now superseded control system,
which prior experience has shown produced samples
containing signicantly more porosity than when manufacturing using up-to-date procedures. In particular,
with this now obsolete setup, the build conditions were
known to produce large tunnel defects near sample
surfaces. A range of sample build geometries were also
chosen to provide dierent levels of tunnel defects, as
well as the more typical gas pores and lack of fusion
defects seen in samples produced with the most
up-to-date procedures.
In common with the current methodology, in the
Arcam machine, the melting stage takes place in two
steps. First, a contour strategy is used to melt the outline
of each 2D section, before a hatching strategy lls in the
section area with continuous linear beam rastering in a
forwards and backwards snaking pattern. To avoid
overheating the already hot region where a hatching track
turns back on itself, a turning function increases the beam
speed, while keeping the energy constant. The hatching
speed is also increased when melting any overhanging
section to compensate for the insulating eect of the
powder bed. More details on the melting strategies
employed are available in References 4 through 7 and 16.
Each of the seven sample geometries investigated (as
shown in Figure 1) was manufactured in a single build
cycle with gas-atomized Ti-6Al-4V powder as the
feedstock. These small samples were designed to have
the same maximum X-ray beam path in a single plane
(15 mm), which allowed the same XCT settings (voltage,
power, beam lter, etc.) to be used when rst scanning
the entire volume of each sample at a lower resolution.
To enable higher resolution scanning, a second cuboid,
with identical geometry to S1, was built and machined
into a smaller cylinder (~1.7 mm diameter in xy plane,
10 mm length in z direction) taken from near the sample
edge. XCT scanning was carried out at the Henry
Moseley X-ray Imaging Facility at the University of
Manchester. The full samples were scanned using a
1940VOLUME 47A, MAY 2016
15 mm
S2
15 m m
15
mm
T2
15 m m
T1
mm
C2
15 m m
S1
5
1
C1
T3
z
x
Fig. 1Geometries and designations of the samples used to investigate the eect of HIPing on defect populations. The reference system denotes
the orientation of the two orthogonal hatching directions (x and y) and the build direction (z).
Fig. 2Isometric 3D visualization of defects (red) in samples C1 and T3, and in the high-resolution scan of the edge of a cuboid sample (labeled
MC): (a) as-built; and (b) after HIPing. All internal porosity was removed in samples C1 and MC, following HIPing, whereas in sample T3, tunnel defects connected to the surface persisted. The build direction for all samples is vertical.
Table I. Pore Volume Fractions Measured by XCT of the Full SEBM Ti-6Al-4V Samples with the Dierent Geometries Shown in
Fig. 1, S1-T3 and from the Higher Resolution Scans of the Small Cylinder Edge (MC) of a Cuboid Sample, As-Built and After a
HIP Cycle
Pore Volume Fraction (%)
Sample
As-Built
Post-HIP
Percentage Reduction in
Pore Volume Fraction
9.9
0.260
0.202
0.001
0.195
0.625
0.118
0.225
0.041
0.064
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.197
0.000
0.062
0.000
75
100
100
100
68
100
72
100
S1
S2
C1
C2
T1
T2
T3
MC
2.0
Fig. 3Examples of aligned vertical internal (xz) slices from XCT data collected as-built (left) and after HIPing (right) in samples: (a) C2 and
(b) T3. In (b) note the tunnel defects that breach the surface (arrowed) that are still present after HIPing. The build direction for both samples is
vertical in the plane of the page.
castings, which is typically caused by hydrogen contamination, it is assumed that the gas is soluble and can thus
diuse out of the casting.[12] It is therefore interesting to
estimate the increase in pressure that would be expected
within the gas pores as they shrink to below the
detection limit in XCT after HIPing. To estimate the
initial pressure within the gas pores, following SEBM,
rst, the hydrostatic pressure (Ph) in a liquid can be
calculated from
Ph Patm q g h;
1
Fig. 4Examples of aligned slices of high-resolution XCT data collected from the cylindrical sample machined from a cuboid sample prior to
(left) and after the HIP cycle (right). Showing a: (a) large gas pores; and (b) a lack of fusion defect. The build direction for both is perpendicular
to the plane of the page.
2
P V n R T;
3
3
Pressure (MPa)
101
100
10-1
10-2
10-3 0
10
101
102
103
Diameter (m)
Fig. 5Pressure increase due to shrinkage of the largest gas pores
detected by high- and low-resolution XCT estimated with the ideal
gas law. The detection limits of the XCT equipment are indicated by
the background color.
result as the pores shrink and that the pores will ultimately reach a volume where they cease to shrink
under the application of a constant pressure, which is
dependent on their as-built volume. The calculated size
of the gas pore at the equilibrium pressure (100 MPa)
was only a small way below the detection limit of the
XCT equipment used (5 lm), indicating that if a
higher resolution system had been used, or larger gas
pores been detected initially, some remnant of the
pores may have been detectable following the HIP
cycle. In addition, in other AM processes conducted
under a shielding gas, rather than a vacuum chamber,
such as selective laser melting (SLM), the pressure
within the as-built pores could be much higher. HIPing
may therefore be less eective when applied to components manufactured via these AM systems.
Nonetheless, the high-cycle fatigue life of Ti-6Al-4V
samples manufactured by SEBM has been shown to be
greatly improved following a HIP cycle.[14,15] High-cycle
fatigue is generally dominated by the number of cycles
required to initiate a crack,[21] so the removal of ready
crack initiation sites is the primary reason behind the
increase in fatigue life. The size of a spherical pore does
not, in fact, change its stress concentration factor,[3] but of
importance in determining fatigue initiation is the eect of
a reduction in the size of the plastic zone near a defect
relative to the scale of microstructural barriers to early
stage crack growth.[21] It has been shown here that any
remaining argon lled pores would be less than 5 lm in
diameter, and this would increase the stress concentration
in only a very small volume of material above the elastic
limit. Such tiny pores are hence unlikely to initiate a crack
able to break through microstructural barriers such as a
colony boundaries.[21] The microstructural coarsening
that occurs in high-temperature HIPing cycles, and
associated increase in crack propagation resistance, has
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