Nanostructure of vortex during explosion welding

The microstructure of a bimetallic joint made by explosion welding of orthorhombic titanium aluminide (Ti-30Al-16Nb-1Zr-1Mo) with commercially pure titanium is studied. It is found that the welded joint has a multilayered structure including a severely deformed zone observed in both materials, a recrystallized zone of titanium, and a transition zone near the interface. Typical elements of the transition zone-a wavy interface, macrorotations of the lattice, vortices and tracks of fragments of the initial materials-are determined. It is shown that the observed vortices are formed most probably due to local melting of the material near the contact surface. Evidence for this assumption is deduced from the presence of dipoles, which consist of two vortices of different helicity and an ultrafine duplex structure of the vortex. Also, high mixing of the material near the vortex is only possible by the turbulent transport whose coefficient is several orders of magnitude larger than the coefficient of atomic diffusion in liquids. The role played by fragmentation in both the formation of lattice macrorotations and the passage of coarse particles of one material through the bulk of the other is determined.