Effects of deformation rate on ductility of Ti-6Al-4V material

To determine the velocity field in which the Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy sheet was sensitive to the strain rate, the formability at different strain rates were tested using a ring sample in the electromagnetic ring expansion experiment. For the test of titanium alloy, an aluminum alloy loop was used as a driver ring due to improve energy efficiency. The expansion velocity and strain rate of titanium ring were predicted by a numerical simulation method which had been verified by experimental data obtained with a high speed camera. The uniform strain was defined as the ratio of the change and the one after expansion of the cross sectional area in this study. Since the fracture strain of a material was related to the aspect ratio (ratio of length to diameter) of samples, the uniform strain was chosen to characterize the ductility of the material. The results indicate that when the tensile speed of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy sample is 2 mm/min (quasi-static), the strain rate of deformation is 6.67x10(-4) 1/s and its uniform strain (epsilon(u)) reaches 0.102. Instead, the uniform strain is only 0.032 when the expanding speed of 46.7 m/s is faster than the quasi-static speed. However, the uniform strain increases proportionally with the increment of the strain rate, and exceeds the quasi-static uniform strain reaching 0.11 or more when the deformation speed is faster than 286 m/s, in which the strain rate exceeded 6935.6/s. Therefore, the deformation speed of 286 m/s or the strain rate of 6935.6 1/s could be considered as the threshold to improve the ductility of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.