Development of the Snoek Anelastic Relaxation Correlated with Oxygen in β-Ti Alloys

Abstract

The β-Ti alloys exhibit excellent shape memory effect and superelastic properties. The interstitial atoms in the alloys have important effect on their physical and mechanical properties. For the interstitial atoms, the internal friction technique can be used to detect their distributions and status in the alloys. The anelastic relaxation in β-Ti alloys is discussed in this paper. β-Ti alloys possesses bcc (body center body) structure. The oxygen (O) atoms in in the alloys is difficult to be removed. The O atoms located at the octahedral sites in the alloys will produce relaxation under cycle stress. In addition, the interaction between the interstitial atoms and substitute atoms, e.g., Nb-O,Ti-O can also produce relaxation. Therefore, the observed relaxational internal friction peak during the measuring of internal friction is widened. The widened multiple relaxation peak can be revolved into Debye,s elemental peaks in Ti-based alloys. The relaxation peak is associated with oxygen movements in lattices under the application of cycle stress and the interactions of oxygen-substitute atoms in metastable β phase (βM) phase for the water-cooled specimens and in the stable β (βS) phase for the as-sintered specimens. The damping peak height is not only associated with the interstitial oxygen, but also the stability and number of βM in the alloys.