Beta Fleck formation in Titanium Alloys

Beta fleck is a troublesome segregation defect in many titanium alloys. It has previously been investigated by several authors and appears to have two formation mechanisms, one similar to that of “freckle” in steels and nickel-base alloys, the other arising in the “crystal rain” effect seen in conventional steel ingots. The freckle defect has been extensively studied and several theories developed to account for its formation in both remelted ingots and directional castings. In this work we compare the findings of investigations into the nickel-base freckle formation mechanism to similar conditions in the vacuum arc remelting of titanium alloys. We find that there are strong similarities between the beta fleck formation conditions and the parameters related to the Rayleigh Number criterion for freckle formation. In particular, the dendritic solidification parameters and the density dependence on segregation coefficients both fit well with the conditions proposed to characterise freckle formation. The second formation mechanism arises in the columnar to equiax transition in solidification. The condition for the avoidance of the defect in the two cases is the shown to be the same, namely the use of a very low VAR melting rate, but that it is unlikely to be 100% successful in preventing defect formation. We propose that the techniques presently in use for alloy development in the superalloy field through optimising the composition for minimum sensitivity to freckle formation should be applied to the formulation of future titanium alloys; also that attention should be paid to developing the PAM process to provide suitable solidification conditions for defect absence in a final ingot.