Microhardness evolution of pure titanium deformed by equal channel angular extrusion

Microhardness homogeneity was assessed on commercial pure titanium processed by equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE). The operation was performed with die channel angle of 90° and processing temperature of 450 °C by route BC up to six passes. The Vickers microhardness measurements were investigated on both cross-sectional and longitudinal planes of the annealed, one-, two-, four-, and six-pass ECAEed titanium. It was found that the application of the process and the addition of pass numbers lead to the improvement of hardness magnitude. It was shown that there are some areas of microhardness heterogeneity in surrounding and bottom regions of the one-pass and two-pass specimens at the cross-sectional plane which is slightly disappeared by adding the pass numbers. Furthermore, there is a suitable amount of hardness homogeneity in the longitudinal plane, irrespective of the specimen condition. It can be concluded that a desirable homogeneity of hardness can be attained after imposing six passes of ECAE process on both cross-sectional and longitudinal planes of titanium.