2D Effects of Anisotropy on the Ductile Fracture of Titanium

Abstract

Titanium is a widely used metal in industrial and commercial applications. It retains anisotropic mechanical properties at room temperature due to its HCP crystal structure. The effects of crystal orientation have been studied theoretically and through modeling though there is a lack of empirical data available on the topic. The work presented here uses laser-machined voids along with EBSD analysis to study the ductility of grains in different orientations to better understand the microscale fracture process in α-titanium. Experimental results show that hard grains with their c-axis parallel to the tensile direction behave in a less ductile manner than grains with their c-axis oriented away from the tensile direction. This is due to the basal slip systems activating in the former case and prismatic slip systems in the latter. Models utilized include the McClintock model for void growth, Brown-Embury model for void coalescence and FEM crystal plasticity simulations