15th Australian International Aerospace Congress (AIAC15)

Stress Relief Heat Treatment for Laser Cladding

Repair of Ti-6Al-4V Aircraft Components

R. Cottam1,6, V. Luzin2, Q. Liu3,6, N. Mathews4,6 Y. Wong1,6 M. Brandt5,6

1
Industrial Laser Applications Laboratory, IRIS, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial
Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122, Australia
2
ANSTO, Lucas Heights, New South Wales, 2232, Australia
3
Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Fishermans Bend, Victoria, 3207,
Australia
4
Rosebank Engineering, Mountain Highway, Bayswater, Victoria, 3153, Australia
5
School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, RMIT University,
Bundoora, Victoria, 3083, Australia
6
Defence Materials Technology Centre Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122, Australia
Abstract
Maintenance of Australian Defence Force aircraft fleets involves either the repair or
replacement of components that have suffered damage from, corrosion, impact, wear
or fatigue. While fatigued components have to be replaced, the worn, impacted or
corroded components can be repaired depending on the extent of the damage. The
cost of repair can save between 30-70% the cost of replacement, thus delivering
significant savings to the defence forces. Australia leads the way in the repair of
components through whats known as additive deposition. Australian company
Rosebank Engineering and the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC) are in
the process of developing a laser cladding repair technology for Ti-6Al-4V aircraft
components (which encompasses this work) due to Ti-6Al-4V extensive use in current
and next generation aircraft. Laser cladding is a thermal process and as such residual
stresses are developed due to processing. To relieve these stresses heat treatments
have been investigated. It was found that heating the component for 3 hrs. at 450oC
reduced tensile residual stresses by 50 MPa (1/3 of the total residual stress) and after 6
hrs. at 450oC reduced the hardness of the clad layer to a level equivalent to that of the
substrate. The origin of the stress relief is due to a relaxation of the phase at this
temperature, which relaxes inter-granular stresses between the and phases.
Keywords: Laser Cladding; Repair; Ti-6Al-4V; Heat Treatment; Neutron Diffraction;
Residual Stress.

Introduction
Maintenance of the Australian Defence Force aircraft fleets is an ongoing process. It
involves both the repair of legacy aircraft and the development of capability for future
aircraft. For legacy aircraft maintenance procedures identifies components that no
longer meet specification or are considered unfit for purpose and are typically replaced.
These replaced components can have a significant price tag and make a major
contribution to the cost of ownership of the fleets. Many of these components can be
repaired resulting is significant savings. The next generation of aircraft will utilise more
Ti-6Al-4V components (such as the Joint Strike Fighter), which are expensive to
manufacture. Therefore the pre-emptive development of repair technologies for this
alloy will allow cost effective maintenance of these aircraft.

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Rosebank Engineering, an Australian company, is currently repairing aircraft

components in the military sector and utilise the cold spray deposition technology. They
are working in partnership with the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC) to
develop their capability with laser cladding to expand the range of components that they
can repair. This work includes developing certified repair techniques for a range of
aerospace alloys. To date this has included investigations into 7xxx aluminium alloys,
high strength steels and Ti-6Al-4V alloy.
Currently laser cladding parameters have been developed by this group [1] for Ti-6Al4V laser cladding and the resulting residual stresses have been measured [2]. It has
been identified that tensile stresses are developed in the substrate near the clad layer
substrate interface. Tensile stresses are undesirable for fatigue applications as they
can accelerate crack growth rates and so an investigation into developing a stress relief
heat treatment was conducted. The literature revealed that there were heat treatments
being used for the electron beam welding of Ti-6Al-4V structures [3] without an
understanding of the process of stress relaxation. A synchrotron study of welded Ti-6Al4V [4] revealed that the lattice parameter in the beta phase of the alloy was decreasing
due to being exposed to temperatures between 400oC and 600oC. They concluded that
the stresses were being relaxed without suggesting a mechanism for the relaxation.
The paper identified that the greatest relaxation occurred at 450 oC. This paper explores
the effect of time on the heat treatment of laser clad Ti-6Al-4V when exposed to a heat
treatment temperature of 450oC.

Experimental
A 2.5kW Nd:YAG Rofin-Sinar laser was used to perform the laser cladding. The laser
was delivered with a 0.6 mm diameter step-index optical glass fibre terminated with
collimating and focussing lenses of 200 mm focal length positioned to produce a laser
spot size of 3 mm. The powder was delivered with a side injecting nozzle positioned
perpendicular to the direction of the laser movement and in line with the laser spot. The
Ti-6Al-4V powder used to create the clad layer was supplied by TLS, Germany and had
an average particle size of 60 m. Three samples were produced using laser power of
1477W, a laser traversing speed of 1500mm/min and a laser spot size of 3mm, which
had a Gaussian profile. The cladding was conducted in an inert gas environment
chamber to reduce the pick-up of oxygen and nitrogen during cladding.
Two samples were placed in an oven with an air atmosphere at 450 oC. After 3 hrs. one
of the samples was taken out and cooled in air. After 6 hrs. the other sample was taken
out and cooled in air. Residual strain through-sample-thickness scanning was carried
out by at neutron diffractometer KOWARI (ANSTO, Australia). A monochromatic
neutron beam with = 1.727 and diffraction from Ti (103) reflections were used for
the strain analysis of the samples. The combination of titanium (103) lattice spacing and
the wavelength resulted in the scattering angle of 90 providing the best spatial
resolution and the instrument configuration to be close to optimal in regard to the beam
intensity. For the neutron strain measurements a sampling volume with nominal size of
0.4 x 0.4 x 18 mm3 was used. This spatial resolution was sufficient to perform through
thickness scans at 9 different depths at the same time providing good accuracy of strain
measurements of 60-70 strains that resulted in the stress accuracy of ~5 MPa.
Neutron diffraction data was collected for three perpendicular directions (two
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perpendicular in-plane direction and one normal) enabling the resolution of in-plane
stresses and the unstrained lattice parameter d0.
After neutron diffraction the samples were sectioned perpendicular to the track direction
and prepared for metallography. The samples were polished initially by grinding, which
was followed by polishing where the final stage colloidal silica was used. The samples
were etched with Krolls reagent. SEM was conducted on a field emission Zeiss 40VP
supra microscope. Microhardness traverses were also conducted on a Buehler
microhardness tester with a load of 300 g.

Results
The results of the neutron diffraction are shown in Figure 1 as residual stress profiles.
The tensile residual stress after laser cladding is around 150 MPa at the clad substrate
interface region and into the substrate which was consistent with the pervious study [2].

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c
Fig 1: Residual stress profiles in laser clad Ti-6Al-4V samples; a as clad; b heat
treated 3hrs at 450oC; b heat treated 6hrs at 450oC.

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Fig. 2: SEM of laser clad Ti-6Al-4V samples; a as clad; b heat treated 3hrs at
o
o
450 C; b heat treated 6hrs at 450 C.
Then after three hours at 450oC the residual stress has been lowered by 50 MPa to
around 100MPa. After the six hours at 450oC there is no further decrease in the
residual stress levels. The absence of a stress balance in the three figures can be
attributed to the fact that the near the edges of samples were not measured. It is
reasonable that the edges are in compression of a magnitude that balances the
stresses.
To develop an understanding of the mechanism of residual stress characterisation of
the microstructure was performed. SEM of the microstructure after etching showed that
there was no discernable change in the microstructure due to the heat treatment Figure
2. Microhardness traverses, Figure 3, showed that after 3 hours there was no change in
the hardness and after 6 hours the hardness decrease to almost the level of the
substrate.

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Fig. 3: Microhardness traverses of laser clad Ti-6Al-4V sample.

Discussion of Results
From the results it is apparent that there are two distinct effects of the heat treatment at
450oC for the two times used. After three hours the residual stress is relaxed and then
after six hours the hardness lowers close to that of the substrate. The origins of the two
events are microstructurally related but are exclusive. The origins of the two effects will
be discussed separately below.
The relaxation of the residual stresses after three hours can be attributed to a relaxation
of the phase at that temperature. The formation of residual stresses between the
and phases has three sources. These are:
The difference in thermal expansion between the and phases;
The generation of stresses during the transformation during cooling;
The decrease in atomic volume of phase relative to the phase during cooling.
These stresses are separate to residual stresses generated due to the thermal profile
during laser cladding, where the colder material constrains the hotter material resulting
in the formation of tensile stresses. These types of stress is known as type I stresses
also known as macroscopic stresses [5]. Whereas the stresses between the two
phases are known as type II stresses, or inter-granular.
The synchrotron work of Elmer et al [4] revealed that at 450oC the lattice spacing of the
just the phase relaxes due to the temperature. As was mention in the introduction this
is the basis of the heat treatment. The work of Elmer et al simply noted that the
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relaxation was occurring and the residual stress levels in the sample were not
measured. The result in Figure 1 shows that in fact some of the tensile residual
stresses produced by laser cladding are relaxed due to the relaxation of the phase.
Given the inter-granular nature of the stress relaxation and the fact that not all the
residual stress is relaxed, it is proposed that just the type II inter-granular stresses are
relaxed due to this heat treatment. For this sample those stresses amount to 50MPa.
The remaining residual stresses are type I stress and can be attributed to the thermal
profile created during laser cladding.
The reason for the relaxation of the phase still remains unclear. As noted in Elmers et
al paper the temperature is too low for the diffusion of vanadium from the to the
phase. SEM microscopy, Figure 2, clearly shows that there is no distinct change to the
morphology of the microstructure due to the heat treatment and that the hardness of
the material does not change when the residual stress is being relaxed Figure 3. The
strength of Ti-6Al-4V at 450oC is higher than the residual stress levels and therefore the
relaxation is not due to plastic deformation [6]. More testing is required to understand
the mechanism of the relaxation of the phase.
The reduction in the hardness level of the laser clad layer after 6 hours at 450 oC was
unexpected. In martensitic steels the reduction in hardness due to heat treatment is
known as tempering. During the martensitic transformation in steels a large amount of
dislocations are formed due to the violent nature of the transformation. Then during a
low temperature heat treatment the dislocations recover into cell arrangements which
reduces the hardness of the material [7]. The high density of dislocations has been
observed in laser clad Ti-6Al-4V martensitic structures [8], therefore its reasonable to
assume that the same process is occurring during the investigated heat treatment and
accounts for the observed decrease in hardness.
The occurrence of both a reduction in the residual stress levels and a reduction of the
hardness to a level of the substrate materials, this heat treatment is ideal for a repair
technology. The low levels of residual stress should not significantly influence the
fatigue life of the repaired components, which is important in aerospace applications.
The restoration of the clad layer hardness is desirable as the new layer will perform to
OEM specification, which is important in the certification of the repair technology with
the DGTA. Also due to the low temperature of this heat treatment shielding gas in the
furnace is not required, which make the process industrially attractive.

Conclusions
A new heat treatment for the stress relaxation and tempering of Ti-6Al-4V martensite
has been developed. It was found that the Type II inter-granular stresses were relaxed
after 3 hrs. at 450oC. Then after a further 3hrs (6hrs. in total) the martensitic
microstructure has been tempered. The change in the properties of the material due to
the heat treatment are desirable for the application to the laser cladding repair
technology being developed for Ti-6AL-4V aircraft components.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the Defence Materials Technology Centre (DMTC) for
funding this work through program 4, Propulsion Systems, project 4.1 Repair
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technologies for current and next generation aircraft systems. The authors would also
like to thank Girish Thipperudrappa for his help with conducting the laser cladding
experiments and AINSE for supplying funding for neutron proposal 1989 Residual
Stress Analysis of Laser Clad Ti-6Al-4V Powder on a Ti-6Al-4V Substrate.

References
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Key Engineering Materials, Vol. 520, 2012, pp. 309-313.
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