High-efficiency forming processes for complex thin-walled titanium alloys components: state-of-the-art and perspectives

Abstract

Complex thin-walled titanium alloy components play a key role in the aircraft, aerospace and marine industries, offering the advantages of reduced weight and increased thermal resistance. The geometrical complexity, dimensional accuracy and in-service properties are essential to fulfill the high-performance standards required in new transportation systems, which brings new challenges to titanium alloy forming technologies. Traditional forming processes, such as superplastic forming or hot pressing, cannot meet all demands of modern applications due to their limited properties, low productivity and high cost. This has encouraged industry and research groups to develop novel high-efficiency forming processes. Hot gas pressure forming and hot stamping-quenching technologies have been developed for the manufacture of tubular and panel components, and are believed to be the cut-edge processes guaranteeing dimensional accuracy, microstructure and mechanical properties. This article intends to provide a critical review of high-efficiency titanium alloy forming processes, concentrating on latest investigations of controlling dimensional accuracy, microstructure and properties. The advantages and limitations of individual forming process are comprehensively analyzed, through which, future research trends of high-efficiency forming are identified including trends in process integration, processing window design, full cycle and multi-objective optimization. This review aims to provide a guide for researchers and process designers on the manufacture of thin-walled titanium alloy components whilst achieving high dimensional accuracy and satisfying performance properties with high efficiency and low cost.

Dynamic Softening and Hardening Behavior and the Micro-Mechanism of a TC31 High Temperature Titanium Alloy Sheet within Hot Deformation

“…In this paper, the β transition temperature of the TC31 titanium alloy was confirmed to be 1025 °C by the metallographic method; therefore, the maximum tensile temperature was chosen as 1000 °C. The strain rate during the process of the hot gas pressure forming was about 0.01 s −1 [ 3 , 8 , 15 ]; therefore, the range of strain rate in this study was chosen from 0.001 s −1 to 0.1 s −1 .…”

“…However, titanium alloys have high strength, poor ductility, and a low Young’s modulus at room temperature, so it is usually necessary to heat titanium alloys to a certain temperature for hot forming, such as hot forging, hot pressing, superplastic forming, and hot gas pressure forming, etc. [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Hot gas pressure forming is a process that can form titanium alloy complex thin-walled components with a relatively high efficiency.…”

Analysis of the Advantages of Laser Processing of Aerospace Materials Using Diffractive Optics

“…Therefore, parts are manufactured by heating the blanks using specially equipped stamping equipment. Heating is performed in resistance furnaces by radiation and electro-contact heating [98][99][100].…”

Hot Gas Pressure Forming of Ti-55 High Temperature Titanium Alloy Tubular Component

“…In order to reduce weight and increase the flexibility of the vehicle, high-temperature titanium alloys such as IMI834, IMI829, Ti1100, Ti-55, Ti-60, and Ti-65 are very competitive candidates for those components compared with steels or nickel alloys [ 3 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. However, determining how to manufacture complex thin-walled components made of high-temperature titanium alloys efficiently is difficult because of the high deformation resistance and severe springback at room temperature [ 8 ]. Complex thin-walled titanium alloys components were traditionally formed by superplastic forming [ 9 ].…”

“…With regards to the forming of titanium alloys tubular components, they were usually formed by hot pressing and welding, namely forming two halves first and then welding them together. In order to improve the forming efficiency and reliability of titanium alloys tubular components, hot gas pressure forming (HGPF) for titanium alloys was developed [ 8 ]. However, most of the studies focused on the forming of low-strength titanium alloys such as TA2 [ 11 ], grade 2 commercially pure titanium [ 12 ], and Ti-3Al-2.5V titanium alloy [ 13 , 14 , 15 ].…”