Recycling of titanium machining chips by severe plastic deformation consolidation

It has been demonstrated that severe plastic deformation (SPD) can be used to consolidate particles of a wide range of sizes from nano to micro into fully dense bulk material with good mechanical properties. SPD consolidation allows processing to be conducted at much lower temperatures and is therefore suitable for particles with highly metastable structures such as nanocrystalline. It is especially useful in the fabrication of multiphase materials including metal matrix nanocomposites. In this investigation, SPD consolidation was applied to recycle Ti machining chips. In particular, the as-received chips were consolidated by equal channel angular pressing at temperatures between 400 and 600 °C with the application of a back pressure from 50 to 200 MPa. Fully dense bulk Ti with fine grain sizes was produced, possessing strength comparable or higher than that of commercially pure wrought Ti. It is concluded that SPD consolidation is a promising method for recycling and value-adding of Ti chips. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.