Effect of microstructure on adiabatic shear band bifurcation in Ti–6Al–4V alloys under ballistic impact

Adiabatic shear band (ASB) bifurcations in Ti–6Al–4V alloys with equiaxed, bimodal, and lamellar microstructures under ballistic impact were studied using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Focused ion beam (FIB) technology was used to accurately prepare TEM samples in the ASB regions, which contained the regions in front of the ASB bifurcation, behind the ASB bifurcation, and the bifurcation regions. ASB consisted of dynamically recrystallized equiaxed grains and incompletely and dynamically recrystallized striped subgrains. ASB bifurcation occurred when the deformation incongruity between striped subgrains and surrounding equiaxed grains intensified sufficiently. Microstructure has an important effect on the number and morphology of ASB bifurcations. More ASB bifurcations formed in Ti–6Al–4V alloys with bimodal and lamellar microstructures than in the alloy with equiaxed microstructure because of the different amounts and distributions of striped subgrains. In the equiaxed microstructure, fewer subgrains were preserved in ASBs. Thus, forming deformation incongruities sufficiently intense to induce ASB bifurcation was difficult. In the bimodal microstructure, numerous striped subgrains and deformation incongruity locations were observed. More randomly distributed deformation incongruity locations would ultimately lead to more random ASB bifurcations. In the lamellar microstructure, the striped subgrains arranged along different directions in different colonies caused more intense deformation incongruity than when the subgrains were in the same colony. ASB bifurcation more commonly occurred at colony boundaries.