The mechanical properties of TiAl‐based alloys with lamellar microstructure are extremely anisotropic. However, if the lamellar microstructure can be aligned parallel to the growth direction, the resulting material should possess a good combination of mechanical properties. Unfortunately, simple casting operations often lead to a solidification texture with the lamellar boundaries perpendicular to the heat flow direction. This difficulty can be overcome by directionally solidifying TiAl‐based alloys. We have been performing directional solidification experiments with and without using a seeding technique. The current status of directional solidification of TiAl‐based alloys is reviewed.
By using an appropriately oriented seed from the TiAl-Si system (Ti-43Al-3Si), the TiAl/Ti3Al lamellar structure has been successfully aligned parallel to the growth direction for TiAl ingots of the Ti-Al-Nb, Ti-Al-Nb-Si, Ti-Al-Ta-Si systems on the basis of the recently proposed method to predict the appropriate compositions. The Al equivalents for Nb and Ta are reevaluated in order to extend the proposed method to large addition (above a several at. %) of these alloying elements. These DS ingots with the lamellar structure all aligned parallel to the loading axis exhibit creep properties far better than conventionally produced TiAl ingots so far reported.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.