4. Industrial materials with superplastic behavior

4.1 Titanium alloys

The superplasticity of titanium alloys has been known for some thirty years, and this property very quickly aroused sustained interest in part shaping due to the following facts: these alloys exhibit superplastic behavior under conventional processing conditions; superplastic shaping can be advantageously combined with material diffusion welding to produce aeronautical structural parts with very high mechanical properties and very low mass; no significant damage occurs during superplastic deformation. On the other hand, these are expensive alloys, difficult to shape using traditional forming and machining techniques.

Some fifteen grades were made superplastic in the 1980s, the most important being the TA 6 V alloy, whose superplastic forming...