One of the most potent examples of interstitial solute strengthening in metal alloys is the extreme sensitivity of titanium to small amounts of oxygen. Unfortunately, these small amounts of oxygen also lead to a markedly decreased ductility, which in turn drives the increased cost to purify titanium to avoid this oxygen poisoning effect. Here, we report a systematic study on the oxygen sensitivity of titanium that provides a clear mechanistic view of how oxygen impurities affect the mechanical properties of titanium. The increased slip planarity of Ti-O alloys is caused by an interstitial shuffling mechanism, which is sensitive to temperature, strain rate, and oxygen content and leads to the subsequent alteration of deformation twinning behavior. The insights from our experimental and computational work provide a rationale for the design of titanium alloys with increased tolerance to variations in interstitial content, with notable implications for more widespread use of titanium alloys.
The core structure of
-type screw dislocations in hexagonal close packed titanium is investigated computationally using periodic supercells with quadrupolar configurations in combination with density functional theory (DFT) and a modified embedded atom method (MEAM) classical potential. Two arrangements of the quadrupolar supercell configurations are examined, and within each arrangement two initial dislocation positions are compared. (Meta)stable pyramidal and prismatic dislocation core structures exist within both DFT and MEAM methods, and the relaxed structure from a given configuration resulting from our anisotropic elasticity theory solution depends only on the assumed initial dislocation positions. Within DFT we find the ground state core structure to be spread on the pyramidal plane. We find that it is necessary to include the semi-core 3p electrons as valence states in the DFT calculations in order to converge the ground state dislocation core configuration and difference in energy between structures. In terms of k-point sampling, it is found that at least a
k-point mesh is necessary to converge the dislocation core structure for a supercell one Burgers vector deep. Use of higher k-point densities or inclusion of additional semi-core electronic states as valence electrons results in the same core structure. With the MEAM potential considered in this work, we find the ground state core configuration to be spread predominantly on the prismatic plane, in contrast with the DFT results.
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