Effect of thermo-mechanical treatment on mechanical and elastic properties of Ti-36Nb-5Zr alloy

The evolutions of phase constitutions and mechanical properties of a β-phaseTi-36Nb-5Zr (wt%) alloy during thermo-mechanical treatment were investigated. The alloy consisted of dual (β+α″) phase and exhibited a double yielding phenomenon in solution treated state. After cold rolling and subsequent annealing at 698K for 20min, an excellent combination of high strength (833MPa) and low modulus (46GPa) was obtained. The high strength can be attributed to high density of dislocations, nanosized α phase and grain refinement. On the other hand, the low Young[U+05F3]s modulus originates from the suppression of chemical stabilization of β phase during annealing, which guarantees the low β-phase stability. Furthermore, the single-crystal elastic constants of the annealed Ti-36Nb-5Zr alloy were extracted from polycrystalline alloy using an in-situ synchrotron X-ray technique. The results indicated that the low shear modulus C₄₄ contributes to the low Young[U+05F3]s modulus for the Ti-36Nb-5Zr alloy, suggesting that reducing C₄₄ through thermo-mechanical treatment might be an efficient approach to realize low Young[U+05F3]s modulus in β-phase Ti alloys. The results achieved in this study could be helpful to elucidate the origin of low modulus and sheds light on developing novel biomedical Ti alloys with both low modulus and high strength.