Effect of electropulsing on deformation behavior of Ti–6Al–4V alloy during cold drawing

Electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to investigate effect of electropulsing on microstructure and texture evolution of Ti–6Al–4V during cold drawing. Research results demonstrate that the electropulsing treatment (EPT) can enhance the deformability of the grains with unfavorable orientations, which makes the compatibility of deformation among grains much better. A comparison in texture evolution between conventional cold drawing and EPT cold drawing indicates that the EPT promotes prismatic «a» slip moving, restricts pyramidal «c+a» slip occurring and accommodates the deformation with c-component by grain boundary sliding. The fraction decrease of low-angle grain boundaries for samples deformed with EPT reveals that the application of electropulsing restricts the formation of the incidental dislocation boundaries and the geometrically necessary boundaries.