Static and dynamic response of titanium alloy produced by electron beam melting

The suitability of Titanium alloys for many specialized applications requiring excellent performances at both static and dynamic strain rates, benefits of modern manufacturing technologies like the additive manufacturing, oriented toward the obtainment of complicated component shapes.The EBM methodology for the production of Ti6Al4V components is based on the localized melting of alloy powders by way of guided electron beams scanning the powder volume by successive planar trajectories; for this reason, the whole production process may confer a certain degree of anisotropy to the components. The material behavior of the EBM alloy may be orientation-dependent in terms of stress-strain elastoplastic response as well as in terms of damage sensitivity and ductile fracture under given triaxiality histories.The static and dynamic behavior of a sintered Ti6Al4V alloy is investigated here by way of quasistatic tension-torsion tests and dynamic tensile Hopkinson bar (SHTB) tests.The outcome of the latter experiments, compared to similar tests results from the literature concerning Ti alloy obtained by classical metallurgical techniques, gives some indications about how the technological process may affect the final performance of the material and the component.