Influence of microstructure on high-cycle fatigue of Ti-6Al-4V: Bimodal vs. lamellar structures

The high-cycle fatigue (HCF) of titanium alloy turbine engine components remains a principal cause of failures in military aircraft engines. A recent initiative sponsored by the United States Air Force has focused on the major drivers for such failures in Ti-6Al-4V, a commonly used turbine blade alloy, specifically for fan and compressor blades. However, as most of this research has been directed toward a single processing/heat-treated condition, the bimodal (solution-treated and overaged (STOA)) microstructure, there have been few studies to examine the role of microstructure. Accordingly, the present work examines how the overall resistance to high-cycle fatigue in Ti-6Al-4V compares between the bimodal microstructure and a coarser lamellar (beta-annealed) microstructure. Several aspects of the HCF problem are examined. These include the question of fatigue thresholds for through-thickness large and short cracks; microstructurally small, semi-elliptical surface cracks; and cracks subjected to pure tensile (mode I) and mixed-mode (mode I + II) loading over a range of load ratios (ratio of minimum to maximum load) from 0.1 to 0.98, together with the role of prior damage due to sub-ballistic impacts (foreign-object damage (FOD)). Although differences are not large, it appears that the coarse lamellar microstructure has improved smooth-bar stress-life (S-N) properties in the HCF regime and superior resistance to fatigue-crack propagation (in pure mode I loading) in the presence of cracks that are large compared to the scale of the microstructure; however, this increased resistance to crack growth compared to the bimodal structure is eliminated at extremely high load ratios. Similarly, under mixed-mode loading, the lamellar microstructure is generally superior. In contrast, in the presence of microstructurally small cracks, there is little difference in the HCF properties of the two microstructures. Similarly, resistance to HCF failure following FOD is comparable in the two microstructures, although a higher proportion of FOD-induced microcracks are formed in the lamellar structure following high-velocity impact damage.