Improving cold creep resistance: In-situ measurements of stress relaxation in pre-strained titanium alloys during annealing.

Titanium alloys show creep-like deformation at room temperature, a phenomenon called cold creep (CC). CC can lead to premature and unexpected failure in components, and its alleviation is a major technological challenge. It has been demonstrated that alleviation can be achieved by heating the material to relatively low temperatures (~200 °C), but the mechanism responsible is under dispute. In this experiment, we aim to use Dark Field X-ray Microscopy (DFXM) with 3DXRD at ID03 to measure the evolution of misorientation and elastic strains of individual grains during the heating after cold creep and determine, unambiguously, the underpinning mechanism for its alleviation.