DEVELOPMENT OF FOIL METALLURGY TECHNIQUE FOR PRODUCTION OF TIAL

An elemental foil metallurgy process, based on pure titanium and alumi nium foils, has been developed to produce TiAl based intermetallic com pounds. The processing comprises five steps; coiling of pure titanium and aluminium foils, encapsulating, reaction annealing, precompacting, and hot isostatic pressing. Samples processed by this method have low oxygen contents (0.04-0.07 wt-%); a duplex layer microstructure is ob tained. Foil metallurgy is shown to be an attractive processing techni que to produce near net shape formed components fabricated from high q uality titanium aluminides by conventional closed die forging of encap sulated Ti/Al coils before hot isostatic pressing, i.e. before the for mation of the brittle TiAl.