Hot forging design and microstructure evolution of a high Nb containing TiAl alloy

• The TiAl billet exhibits homogenous microstructure after multiple forging.
• MDRX plays an important role in the refinement of microstructure.
• The strain-induced segregation contributes to the stability of β/B2 phase.
• The present alloy can be performed in near-conventional forging operations.

With respect to the wrought processing of γ-TiAl alloys, the hot forging processes for ingot-breakdown is one of the most important steps. To obtain a billet with fine and uniform microstructure and excellent mechanical performances, an understanding of the strictly controlled forging processes and microstructure evolution are necessary. The hot forging processes and microstructure evolution of a high Nb containing TiAl alloy with nominal composition of Ti–43Al–8Nb–0.2W–0.1Y (at.%) were investigated in this paper. Three forging routes, one-step canned forging (OCF), one-step non-canned forging (ONF) and multi-step non-canned forging (MNF), were designed to study their effect on microstructure evolution of as-forged materials. Results showed that OCF and ONF produced nonuniform microstructures due to inhomogeneous deformation, while the specifically designed MNF process yielded fine and uniform grains, indicating that it is an effective and economic approach for ingot break-down of the present alloy. Besides, it is also found that forging at (α + β) phase region can retain large amount of β/B2 phase due to the strain-induced segregation of Nb and W, which is beneficial to the workability, and thus enables the use of near-conventional forging operations for the present alloy. The proposed multi-step forging in the present work may yield important information for the development of hot-deformation techniques and new alloy design strategies of γ-TiAl alloys.