Mechanical behavior of Ti-5553 alloy. Modeling of representative cells.

This work focuses on a new beta metastable titanium alloy, Ti-5553, for aeronautical applications. The goals of this study are the characterization of the two phases (alpha and beta) of this titanium alloy and the numerical modeling of representative cells of this material, which will be used to determine the appropriate microstructure.This thesis is divided into several parts. First, the numerical tools necessary to characterize this alloy and to model representative cells using the periodic homogenization theory will be presented. Secondly, the body-centered cubic beta phase will be identied. Then, the third part will concentrate on the characterization of the hexagonal close-packed alpha phase. Finally, the last part of this thesis will focus on choosing and modeling representative cells containing the phases identfied in the previous parts.The experimental tensile tests performed at different strain rates have demonstrated the necessity of using an elastic-viscous-plastic constitutive law. Guided by macroscopic (tensile and simple shear) experiments, a microscopic plasticity-based constitutive law was chosen to characterize this alloy instead of a macroscopic Norton-Hoff's constitutive one.It will be shown that the beta phase can be fully maintained in macroscopic samples at room temperature, making the characterization of the material behavior of this phase possible from macroscopic experiments. The optimized set of parameters was validated on nanoindentation tests performed in different beta grain orientations. In addition, a sensitivity analysis of several parameters from nanoindentation tests was performed and shows the importance of accurately defining some parameters, such as the exact shape of the indenter, and the negligible influence of other parameters, such as Poisson's ratio. From this study of experimental and numerical nanoindentation tests, it also appears that the orientation of the beta grain indented hardly affects the nanoindentation results.The characterization of the alpha phase was performed using nanoindentation experimental tests available for different grain orientations. This choice was influenced by the impossibility of maintaining only an alpha phase in a macroscopic Ti-5553 sample at room temperature and by the failure to represent the phase accurately from macroscopic (alpha+beta) samples. The material characterization of this phase is complex and difficulties occur when the behavior of this phase has to be characterized for different orientations by only one set of parameters.Finally, experimental microstructures were chosen and their simplied corresponding representative cells were meshed. Numerical simulations of these representative cells were performed and the influence of several parameters will be studied, such as the effect of the appearance of the alpha phase in the beta matrix and the effect of the shape of the alpha phase on the behavior of the cell.