Defect-assisted refinement of nanoscale alpha in titanium alloys

Abstract Titanium alloys owe their superior fatigue performance to a lack of extrinsic nucleation sites for cracking, but this also results in difficulty in developing fine, 10 nm scale precipitates to provide fatigue strength. Conventional Ti alloys used for large components such as jet engine discs must instead develop a hierarchical microstructure through successive waves of nucleation. Here we show that intermediate temperature deformation can result in the nucleation of nanoscale hcp α prec