Recent Developments in Mechanisms and the Kinetics of Deformation Twinning in Titanium Alloys

Within the past decade, it has been shown that twinning in alpha, beta, and alpha + beta titanium alloys can occur at speeds much lower than the speed of sound by many orders of magnitude. This is related to the twinning deformation mechanisms controlled by the diffusion of oxygen as compared to simply a shear process. Very recent developments, such as strain-rate effects on twinning, support a recent hypothesis that the twinning in these materials is controlled by a slow diffusion process, resulting in time-dependent twinning. These recent developments, along with the ramifications of the findings will be outlined in this article.