| The effects of microstructural factors on high-cycle fatigue properties and fatigue crack propagation behavior of welded regions of a cast Ti-6Al-4V alloy were investigated in this study. High-cycle fatigue test and fatigue crack propagation test were conducted for the welded regions, which were processed by two different welding methods, i.e., tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding and electron beam (EB) welding, and then the test data were analyzed in relation to microstructures, tensile properties, and fatigue fracture mode. The base metal was composed of Widmansta¨tten structure, while the EB and TIG welds consisted of basket-weave type structure having thin α platelets. The high-cycle fatigue results indicated that fatigue strength of the EB weld was lower than that of the base metal or the TIG weld because of the existence of coarse pores formed during welding, although it had highest yield strength. In the case of the fatigue crack propagation, the EB weld composed of very thin α platelets had the faster crack propagation rate than the base metal or the TIG weld. The effective microstructural factor determining the fatigue crack propagation rate was found to be the width of α platelets because it was well matched with the reversed plastic zone size calculated at near-threshold ΔK. |
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