Heat treatment, mechanical and FEA predictions for Ti-6Al-4V alloy

The effect of heat treatment on mechanical properties and microstructures of Ti-6Al-4V alloy for improved finite element analysis (FEA) based on design optimisation have been investigated. Mechanical testing results indicated that the heat treatment slightly reduced the tensile strength, extension and Vickers hardness, but increased the Young¿s modulus only marginally. The FEA model slightly overestimated the extension for each of the heat treated samples and comparison between mechanical and FEA showed where the model is safe to be applied. Inputting the specific heat treated material properties for FEA analysis does make the results more accurate, but the accuracy of the results still differ from the actual mechanical test results. It is, however, still acceptable to use the linear collected FEA data to predict the conditions up to a calculated threshold and the use of FEA should be safe depending on the application of the physical predictions.