The effect of grain orientation on fracture morphology during high-cycle fatigue of Ti-6Al-4V

Three different product forms of Ti-6Al-4V, unidirectionally rolled and cross-rolled plate and forged bar, have been cyclically loaded within the high-cycle fatigue regime to investigate fatigue crack initiation. The fracture surfaces of fatigued specimens contained large regions of neighbouring facets. The majority of facets examined had a near-basal fracture plane. It was shown that grains favouring crack initiation were primarily those with misorientations between 15 degrees and 40 degrees from the loading direction, whereas other orientations served as crack growth paths. This implies that the formation of a facet requires a combination of a moderately high Schmid factor for basal slip coupled with a tensile component perpendicular to the basal plane. The large regions of neighbouring facets on the fracture surface were found to be a consequence of cracking within a macrozone unfavourably oriented for slip found within the microstructure, i.e. one with its c-axis near to the loading direction. (C) 2009 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.