Effects of Process Parameters on Deformation and Temperature Uniformity of Forged Ti-6Al-4V Turbine Blade

This work is motivated by the frequent occurrence of macro- and microdefects within forged Ti-6Al-4V turbine blades due to the severely nonuniform strain and temperature distributions. To overcome the problem of nonuniformity during the blade forging operation, firstly, a 2D coupled thermo-mechanical finite element approach using the strain-compensated Arrhenius-type constitutive model is employed to simulate the real movements and processing conditions, and its reliability is verified experimentally. Secondly, two evaluation indexes, standard deviation of equivalent plastic strain and standard deviation of temperature, are proposed to evaluate the uniformity characteristics within the forged blade, and the effects of four process parameters including the forging velocity, friction factor, initial workpiece temperature and dwell time on the uniformity of strain and temperature distributions are carefully studied. Finally, the numerically optimized combination of process parameters is validated by the application in a practical process. The parametric study reveals that a reasonable combination of process parameters considering the flow resistance, flow localization and the effects of deformation and friction heating is crucial for the titanium alloy blade forging with uniformity. This work can provide a significant guidance for the design and optimization of blade forging processes.