Linear fiction welding of alpha 2 titanium aluminides

TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 442/1992

By W A Baeslack III, P L Threadgill and E D Nicholas

Background

Titanium aluminide alloys based on the Ti₃Al compound offer significant potential as a high temperature structural material in advanced gas turbine engines. It is therefore important to understand how to join them to themselves and other titanium alloys. Rotary friction welding is widely used in the gas turbine industry for radially symmetrical components, but there are many applications where a linear motion would be useful. This study investigates the linear friction welding of a Ti-14Al-21Nb weight % intermetallic alloy to itself, and to a Ti-6242 alloy.