Mechanism and kinetics of static globularization in TA15 titanium alloy with transformed structure

The static globularization behavior and mechanism of transformed structure during heat-treatment of hot worked TA15 alloy were investigated. It is found that boundary splitting and microstructure coarsening are two competing mechanisms for static globularization. Boundary splitting is significant in the initial stage of annealing while coarsening occurs throughout the annealing process. Static globularization kinetics increases with annealing temperature and prestrain, but is independent on strain rate. The rate of static globularization kinetics decreases with annealing time. The asymptotic equation can be used to model the static globularization kinetics. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.