Titanium MMCs With Enhanced Specific Young’s Modulus via Powder Hot Extrusion

In recent years, wire-based additive manufacturing has become an increasingly attractive manufacturing route for the production of large
titanium components. However, only a few wire materials such as pure titanium and Ti-6Al-4V are commercially available, which are
also prone to columnar grain growth leading to anisotropic mechanical properties. Further, there is a need to develop titanium components
with high specific Young's modulus. To avoid anisotropy and increase the specific mechanical properties, there are two potential solutions:
(1) the addition of alloying elements such as copper, which induce eutectoid reactions, and (2) the addition of ceramic particles with high
intrinsic Young's modulus or the formation of intermetallic compounds, both of which can prevent grain growth and increase the overall
Young's modulus of the composite. Therefore, we investigated the effects of adding different ceramic particles such as TiC and B 4C to
titanium and titanium alloys. Since the reactivity between ceramics like B4C and titanium is known, the consolidation method must be
carefully selected. One possibility is powder hot extrusion, by which a reaction may be effectively suppressed. However, powder hot
extrusion is also a versatile tool to prepare different titanium alloys starting from elemental powders from the solid state. The resulting
alloys and composites and their microstructure were experimentally investigated by optical microscopy and SEM, X-ray diffraction,
microhardness, elastic modulus measurements with ultrasound and density. Furthermore, an increase in the specific Young's modulus
could be observed in many particle-reinforced samples. It could be also demonstrated that reactive systems of ceramic particles and
titanium can be effectively produced by powder hot extrusion.