Experimental study of tensile strength, hardness and microstructural properties and finite element simulation of titanium specimens made by the combined method of spark plasma sintering and simple shear extrusion

In this study, a titanium sample was fabricated using a spark plasma sintering method and subjected to a severe plastic deformation process at room temperature by a simple shear extrusion method. The effect of plasma sintering, annealing and severe plastic deformation process on microstructural evolution and mechanical properties was investigated and then the extrusion process was simulated by Deform software using finite element method. The simulation results show a good agreement with the experimental experiments. To transfer brittle fracture to soft fracture for ease of forming, the product sample was annealed for 5 hours at 800 ° C under argon shielding gas. The ultimate tensile strength was measured at about 612 MPa for titanium sample produced through a spark plasma sintering (SPS), 503 MPa after annealing the SPS sample, and around 795 MPa after a one-pass of plastic deformation in simple shearing extrusion (SSE). Results clearly demonstrated the positive effect of severe plastic deformation on the strengthing of titanium specimens.Also, the hardness of the sample in the sintering stage reached 373 Vickers, which decreased by 16/8% after annealing and increased by 10/7% after an extrusion pass.