Titanium and titanium alloys have characteristics such as high resistance to hot deformation and complex microstructural evolution during forming, making it difficult for conventional plastic processing methods like forging, rolling, and extrusion to achieve complex shapes. Superplastic forming (SPF) technology can effectively solve this problem. It is an efficient component manufacturing technique suitable for materials that exhibit superplasticity under specific internal and external conditions, such as titanium alloys.
Using the SPF process to manufacture components not only reduces production costs but also significantly improves forming efficiency. It has become an important method for processing titanium alloys and is widely used in the aerospace field. The main SPF methods include superplastic stretching, superplastic forging, superplastic extrusion, and superplastic gas forming, which offer advantages such as large deformation, no necking, low stress, and ease of forming.
Currently, the aerospace, automotive, and high-tech industries demand that part processing be lightweight, strong and tough, precise, efficient, and environmentally friendly. Most precision plastic forming requires specialized molds and consumes a lot of energy. Incremental forming technology, however, can overcome the drawbacks of traditional precision forming molds being highly specialized and energy-intensive, which is why it has attracted much attention. With the continuous expansion of applications for titanium and titanium alloys, high-efficiency, high-quality, and low-cost new technologies and processes (such as superplastic forming, superplastic forming combined with diffusion bonding, and composite incremental forming techniques) are also being continuously developed and researched. As research into new technologies and processes for titanium and titanium alloy processing deepens, product quality and competitiveness will continue to improve.
