Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2012
In the last decades there was a growing interest in developing new light-weight intermetallic alloys, which are able to substitute the heavy superalloys at a certain temperature range. At present a new Ti-Al-Nb-Mo family, called TNM™ alloys, is being optimized to fulfill the challenging requirements. The aim of the present work was to study the microscopic mechanisms of defect mobility at high temperature in TNM alloys in order to contribute to the understanding of their influence on the mechanical properties and hence to promote the further optimization of these alloys. Mechanical spectroscopy has been used to study the internal friction and the dynamic modulus up to 1460 K of a TNM alloy under different thermal treatments. These measurements allow to follow the microstructural evolution during in-situ thermal treatments. A relaxation process has been observed at about 1050 K and was characterized as a function of temperature and frequency in order to obtain the activation parameters of the responsible mechanism. In particular, the activation enthalpy has been determined to be H= 3 eV. The results are discussed and an atomic mechanism is proposed to explain the observed relaxation process.