Grain growth and texture evolution in Ti–6Al–4V during beta annealing under continuous heating conditions

The kinetics of beta grain growth during continuous heating for two texturally-different, but microstructurally-equivalent, lots of Ti–6Al–4V material were determined using a direct-resistance-heating technique. Heating rates of 0.42, 5, 10, and 50 K s−1 were utilized. After reaching the peak temperature, a special cooling procedure was utilized to avoid complete decomposition of the beta phase during cool-down and thus enable direct determination of its texture at the end of high-temperature annealing. It was found that beta grain growth is strongly affected by texture whose evolution can give rise to a behavior which is discontinuous in nature. As a result, dramatic differences in grain-growth behavior were noted in the two lots of material and were explained in terms of variations in beta texture evolution during heat treatment.