Part VI – June 1969 - Papers - Fractography and Crystallography of Subcritical Crack Propagation in High Strength Titanium Alloys

The fracture surfaces of specimens of titanium a1loys which exhibited susceptibility to subcritical crack growth in a wide variety of environments, including aqueous solutions, alcohols, hydrocarbon gases, carbm tetrachloride, and dry air, were examined. The dominant and characteristic fracture mode was cleavage. which became mixed with an increasing porportion of ductile fracture modes (dimples. and so forth) as the applied KI was increased. The cleavage plane in all the alloys was oriented at 15 deg from (0001) of the a phase. No indices could be assigned to the 15 deg cleavage Plane because of uncertainty as to which zone it belonged to. SLOW crack growth and delayed fracture take place in certain titanium alloys at stress intensity (KI) lower than the critical values for complete fracture (KIc) found in short-time tests for plane strain fracture toughness.' Such crack growth may take place in very dry air on sustained loading if the alloy contains a sufficient amount of hydrogen and if the stress intensity factor is higher than a threshold value designated KIH.2 Similarly, a number of environments such as water, alcohols, and hydrocarbons may cause slow crack growth provided the stress intensity factor exceeds the threshold value KISCC. In this paper it is intended to examine some fracto-graphic and crystallographic details of this subcritical crack propagation process as related to alloy composition, environment, and stress intensity. It has been previously reported that subcritical crack growth takes place in titanium alloys in aqueous environments by cleavage.2"6 The observations to be described here indicate that in the alloys investigated the mode of subcritical crack propagation is more dependent on the stress intensity during cracking than on the environment. The fracture mode is illustrated with photographs of the fracture surfaces at a wide range of magnifications. The crystallographic character of the cleavage mode is also presented and the results discussed. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH The studies were made on four titanium alloys— Ti-8A1-1Mo-lV, Ti-5A1-2.5Sn, Ti-7Al-1Mo-lV, and Ti-0.350. Of these four alloys the first two were mill annealed and fine grained. The latter two were noncommercial and coarse grained, having been prepared for other experimental purposes. The crystallographic studies required a large-grain size. Consequently the fine-grained alloys were an- nealed in a vacuum at 1950°F and furnace cooled to produce samples for these studies. This treatment did not alter the microstructure significantly except for grain size. All the aluminum-containing alloys showed primary a with a network of ß-phase particles within the a grains; Figs. 1 and 2 show this microstructure for the specific case of fine-grained Ti-8A1-1Mo-1V. The cracks in the figures will be discussed later. Fractographic studies were made on all the alloys, but the electron fractographs displayed herein are from the Ti-8A1-1Mo-1V alloy in the fine-grained condition. Emphasis was placed on this commercial alloy because considerable information was available on the stress-corrosion cracking characteristics in a variety of environments. Sufficient supplementary studies of the alloy after the anneal to produce large grains were conducted to establish that the stress-corrosion cracking susceptibility and fractographic characteristics were not changed significantly. Thus it could be inferred that the crystallographic data obtained exclusively on large-grained specimens would apply also to fine-grained specimens. Fracture surfaces for study were obtained using precracked cantilever beam specimens loaded as described by Brown. The precracked section of a specimen was immersed in the environment of interest. Values of initial stress intensity factor Kli were chosen slightly higher than KISCC in order to obtain a fairly extensive region of slow crack growth. Fracture surfaces representative of a variety of stress intensity levels could then be examined because in the cantilever beam test KI increases as the crack propagates.