Effects and mechanism of ultrasonic irradiation on solidification microstructure and mechanical properties of binary TiAl alloys

•Ultrasonic irradiation was successfully conducted in binary TiAl alloys initially.•Ultrasonic irradiation induces α phase directly precipitating from the melt.•Coarse colony is refined to 52μm and 102μm for Ti44Al and Ti48Al alloys.•Ultrasonic mechanism is the cavitation-enhanced nucleation for TiAl alloys. In spite of their high temperature and reactivity, the binary TiAl alloys are successfully imposed by the ultrasonic irradiation and the microstructure evolution, solidification behaviors and mechanical properties are elaborately investigated. After ultrasonic irradiation, a high quality ingot without shrinkage defects and element segregation is obtained and the coarse dendrite structure is well modified into fine non-dendrite globular grains. The coarse lamellar colony and lamellar space of Ti44Al alloy is refined from 685μm to 52μm and 1185nm to 312nm, respectively (similarly, 819μm to 102μm and 2085nm to 565nm for Ti48Al alloy). For Ti48Al alloy, the α peritectic phase is simultaneously precipitated from the melt as well as the β primary phase before the peritectic reaction and the solidification is transformed into the mixed α-solidifying and β-solidifying. Ultrasonic irradiation promotes the peritectic reaction and phase transformation completely and the phase constituent becomes more close to the equilibrium level. The compressive strength of Ti44Al and Ti48Al alloys are increased from 623MPa to 1250MPa and 980MPa to 1295MPa, respectively. The grain refinement and dendrite transformation enhance the grain boundary sliding improving the plastic deformation ability. Ultrasonic irradiation significantly accelerates the melt flow and solute redistribution and the main grain refinement mechanism is the cavitation-enhanced nucleation by inclusion activation and heightened supercooling.