A 3D analysis of the onset of slip activity in relation to the degree of micro-texture in Ti–6Al–4V

Abstract The mechanical properties of titanium alloys result from their complex multi-scale microstructural features, including micron scale precipitates and millimeter scale microtextured regions (MTRs). While previous investigations have revealed that the presence of mm-scale MTRs can degrade mechanical properties, particularly fatigue, the accompanying strain localization processes that operate at the microscale within the α grains in MTRs are not well understood. The present work is a mechanistic investigation of MTRs using crystal plasticity simulations of mm3-scale experimentally captured and synthetically generated 3D microstructure datasets. The explicit modeling of both the α grains and MTRs in Ti–6Al–4V enables assessment of the effect of microtexture and local structure variations within the MTR on overall deformation behavior and the onset of plastic slip in MTRs. The presence of MTRs with a dominant [0001] orientation results in both stress and plastic strain hotspots during the early stages of straining. Crystal plasticity predictions are compared to previous digital image correlation studies on early strain localization. The influence of MTRs on the local stress and strain fields is discussed with regard to the monotonic tension, fatigue and dwell-fatigue behavior of titanium alloys.