Abstract: The effects of 0.3%(molar fraction, the same below) yttrium addition on hot deformability of lamellar Ti-45Al-5Nb alloy were investigated by simulated isothermal forging tests. The ingots with the nominal compositions of Ti-45Al-5Nb and Ti-45Al-5Nb-0.3Y were prepared by induction skull melting. Simulated isothermal forging tests were conducted on Gleeble 1500D thermo-simulation machine using a 6 mm in diameter and 10 mm in length compressive specimen at the deformation temperatures of 1 100, 1 150, 1 200 ℃ and strain rates of 1.0, 0.1, 0.01 s−1. The results show that yttrium addition remarkably improves hot deformability of Ti-45Al-5Nb alloy. An appropriate hot deformation processing parameter of Ti-45Al-5Nb-0.3Y alloy is determined as 1 200 ℃, 0.01 s−1. The flow stresses are decreased by yttrium addition under the same compressive conditions. The activation energies of deformation Q are calculated as 448.6 and 399.5 kJ/mol for Y-free and Y-containing alloys, respectively. The deformed microstructure observation under 1 200 ℃, 0.01 s−1 condition indicates that Ti-45Al-5Nb-0.3Y alloy shows more dynamic recrystallization. The improvement of hot deformability of Ti-45Al-5Nb-0.3Y alloy induced by yttrium addition should be attributed to that the smaller the original lamellar colonies, the lower the deformation resistance and activation energy of deformation are, and the more the dynamic recrystallization is.

Key words: TiAl alloy; hot deformability; rare earth yttrium; thermo-simulation