Explosive consolidation of mechanically alloyed Ti-Al alloys

Ti-Al intermetallics are of great interest because of their attractive mechanical properties, but they require advanced processing methods, due to their low ductility at room temperature. In this work, the following processes were employed in order to obtain bulk TiAl and Ti3Al intermetallics: (1) mechanical alloying: ball milling of elemental Ti and Al powders caused formation of supersaturated solid solutions; (2) explosive consolidation: in this operation no phase transitions were observed and sample densities after consolidation reached over 90% of theoretical values; (3) annealing: resulted in additional increase of material density and caused phase transitions leading to formation of TiAl and Ti3Al compounds.