Monash University, Australia
Aijun Huang
Biography
Professor Aijun Huang holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He is a Fellow, Chartered Engineer and Chartered Scientist of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining UK. He is currently the Associate Dean – International, Faculty of Engineering and the Director of Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing and a full tenured professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Monash University. Prior to his appointment at Monash University, Prof. Huang was an industry technical expert for a number of multinational corporations. Prof Huang held the position of the Executive Vice President of the High-Performance Materials Business Unit which exclusively manufacturing all aerospace metallic materials in Baosteel Group; a Fortune Global 500 company. From 2006 to 2012, Prof Huang was the Titanium Specialist of Rolls Royce Derby globally leading the titanium and titanium aluminides fundamental research within the company where he was elected to the Rolls Royce Engineering Leadership List in 2011
Conferences
Room |
Date |
Hour |
Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
| Room 8 |
25-03-2026 |
11:15 am – 11:35 am |
108 Origin of nanoscale triple-twinned martensite in an additively manufactured titanium alloy |
Conferences Details
108 Origin of nanoscale triple-twinned martensite in an additively manufactured titanium alloy
Nanotwins have demonstrated a powerful means of enhancing strength, ductility, and strain hardening in metallic materials. In this study, we reveal the origin of an unreported, fully martensitic microstructure comprising nanoscale triple-twinned martensite in a commercial titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-2Sn-4Zr-6Mo) produced by laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). This microstructure delivers a unique combination of high yield strength (932 MPa) and exceptionally strong strain hardening, with a peak hardening rate exceeding 13 GPa.
Our results show that the formation of nanoscale triple-twinned martensite is governed by the LPBF-specific thermomechanical trajectory. Rapid solidification produces initial martensite plates with widths and internal {111} twin spacings roughly half of those formed by water quenching. Subsequent thermomechanical cycling activates {111} deformation twinning and progressively refines the plates to ~200 nm, generating a parallel nanotwin substructure.The evolving internal stress field then drives the formation of dense (001) stacking faults (SFs) within the nanotwins. Intersections between these SFs and the twin boundaries create steps of odd-number atomic-layer height, from which new twins nucleate. These nucleation events produce a third martensitic variant that is crystallographically twinned with both variants in the original nanotwin, completing the triple-twin configuration.
This mechanism provides previously unrecognised insight into how LPBF can engineer nanoscale triple-twinned martensite, offering a new pathway toward titanium alloys with high yield strength and ultra-strong strain-hardening capability.
