Predicting dwell fatigue life in titanium alloys using modelling and experiment

Cold Dwell Fatigue is a major problem that Titanium based alloys face in the aerospace industry.  Stresses piling up at 'rogue' hard and soft grain pair combinations in these alloys have been shown as the primary cause for this kind of failure.

Researchers from Imperial College (London) and the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford make use of recently developd TKD techniques in the department to measure and visualise this load shedding mechanism between chosen grain pair combinations.

Discrete dislocation plasticity modelling supported by TKD and TEM based experimental measurements, and lifetimes for  'worst case' microstructures  representative of jet engine spin tests have been predicted successfully.

The paper in full, as published in Nature Communications.