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High-speed nanoindentation mapping of a near-alpha titanium alloy made by additive manufacturing

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  • Focus Issue: Advanced Nanomechanical Testing
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Abstract

Titanium alloys are widely used in additive manufacturing, but their complex microstructures and related micromechanical properties have not been fully explored. Here, we employ high-speed nanoindentation mapping, electron probe microanalysis, and electron backscatter diffraction to characterize as-deposited and heat-treated Ti–6Al–2Zr–Mo–V alloys. Our results show the correlations between mechanical contrasts (hardness and elastic modulus) and phase contrasts (α and β). The hardness and elastic modulus of the α and β phases are increased due to the element redistribution after annealing (Al diffuses from β to α; Mo and V diffuse from α to β). We use a K-means clustering algorithm to analyze the nanoindentation dataset and correlate the mechanical property maps to the distribution of α and β phases. Our study employs the emerging high-speed nanoindentation mapping to give a better understanding of the microstructure–mechanical property relationship of additive manufactured multiphase alloys across length scales.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

Z. L., J. Z., and Y. Z.acknowledge the financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC Discovery Grant # RGPIN-2018-05731) and Dean’s Spark Assistant Professorship in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto. The authors acknowledge the technical support from Ontario Centre for the Characterization of Advanced Materials (OCCAM) in the University of Toronto and Dr. Yujie Meng at KLA Instruments Group. Z. L. also acknowledges the China Scholarship Council for a graduate fellowship (No.201907980002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, M5S 3E4, Canada

    Zhiying Liu, Jiahui Zhang & Yu Zou

  2. Research Institute for Frontier Science, Beihang University, 37 Xueyuan Road, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Bei He

  3. Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Guangdong, 518055, People’s Republic of China

    Jiahui Zhang

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  1. Zhiying Liu
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Liu, Z., Zhang, J., He, B. et al. High-speed nanoindentation mapping of a near-alpha titanium alloy made by additive manufacturing. Journal of Materials Research 36, 2223–2234 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43578-021-00204-7

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