Influence of Combined Heat Treatment and Hot Isostatic Pressure (HT-HIP) on Titanium Aluminide Processed by L-PBF

Postprocessing is essential for improving titanium aluminide (TiAl) microstructure and part quality after using the laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) method. It has been reported that Ti-48Al-2Cr-2Nb (%at) processed by L-PBF has internal defects and low fracture toughness. Microstructure control by heat treatment (HT) showed a significant improvement in the ductility of the material. Alternatively, hot isostatic pressing (HIPing) could be applied to reduce the residual stresses and internal defects formed during the L-PBF. Combining the benefits of these two subsequent processes into a single predetermined process is appealing for Ti-48Al-2Cr-2Nb (%at) to minimize cost. This work presents a novel strategy to postprocess L-PBF TiAl by applying combined heat treatment and hot isostatic pressing in one process, namely HT-HIP. The process includes three cycles with different conditions (i.e., temperature, time, and pressure). These conditions were determined to achieve improved part quality and microstructure. The results show that the tensile residual stresses decreased from a peak of 249 MPa in the as-built sample to compressive stresses that peaked at -90 MPa after the HT-HIP process. The number and size of internal defects could be greatly reduced. The defects were transformed into a regular spherical shape, which is good in terms of fatigue strength. Additionally, a duplex microstructure with lamellar α₂/γ colonies could be introduced for better ductility. Different levels of duplex microstructure could be achieved along with the process cycles. The grain structure using EBSD analysis showed refined equiaxed grains, which demonstrate better strength after the HT-HIP process. Twinning boundaries were also observed in the HT-HIP sample. The grain orientation tendency to the build direction significantly reduced after the HT-HIP process. The nanoindentation test was applied to evaluate the nanohardness of the as-built and HT-HIP samples. It could be demonstrated that the nanohardness is dependent on the formed phases and lamellar density inside the grains. The mean hardness value was 8.19 GPa for the as-built sample, while it was 5.48 GPa for the HT-HIP sample.