Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
41
J. Li, H.M. Wang
, H.B. Tang
Laboratory of Laser Materials Processing and Manufacturing, Beihang University (formerly Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), 37 Xueyuan Road,
Beijing 100191, China
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 3 February 2012
Received in revised form29 March 2012
Accepted 8 April 2012
Available online 13 April 2012
Keywords:
Rene
41
Laser melting deposition
Standard heat treatment
Mechanical properties
a b s t r a c t
Ni-base superalloy Rene
C
for 16h followed by air cooling. Microstructure of the as-deposited, solution treated and solution-aged
alloys were characterized by scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy, and
the tensile properties and hardness were tested. The solution-aged Rene
41 was
not suitable for LMD alloy and had to be modied to realize optimum mechanical properties.
2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Rene
C.
It has been widely used for hot section parts in aircraft engines
[13]. However, a high tendency of cracking during forging and
welding restricts its use, which is due to its bad thermoplas-
ticity and serious segregations during conventional slow-cooling
casting process. Laser melting deposition (LMD) is a layerwise
rapid solidication material additive manufacturing technology
which builds complex-shaped components froma computer-aided
design model [4,5]. The technology offers considerable cost sav-
ings, since extensive machining and welding processes are not
involved. Laser melting deposited Rene
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 10 8231 7102; fax: +86 10 8233 8131.
E-mail address: wanghm@buaa.edu.cn (H.M. Wang).
LMD Rene
41 superalloy.
A carbon layer is sputtered on the specimen surface and then an
etching procedure (
1
HF:
7
HNO
3
etching solution) was performed
in order to collect the replicas. The hardness of the samples was
measured using a Vickers microhardness tester using a 1000g load
for a dwell time of 18s. The average hardness value was calculated
from eight indentations. Room temperature tensile tests were
performed on a MTS880 universe tensile testing machine using
column tensile test specimens with a diameter of 5mm and a
gauge length of 25mm. The reported tensile data are an average
of three test results. The surfaces of the failed specimens were
examined by SEMto study the fracture characteristics.
3. Results
3.1. Microstructure
The microstructure of the as-deposited alloy Rene
41 (Fig. 1)
consisted of ne rapid directionally solidied columnar grains with
some ne MC carbide particles distributed in the interdendritic
areas. The MC carbides were found to be enriched in Ti and Mo.
The size of
in Rene
41
has been reported to be 1065
particles was
visible under higher magnications as indicatedinFig. 2b, andmost
of the un-dissolved
particles.
were not easy to etch clearly, the solution and aged alloy revealed
the columnar grain morphology clearly.
The solution treated alloy was given an ageing treatment. Fig. 3
showed the microstructure of the aged alloy consisting of
parti-
cles in different sizes, MC carbides and some other interdendritic
phases which precipitated in the ageing treatment. The interden-
dritic phases were equiaxed or strip-shaped and had an average
length of approximately 300600nm (Fig. 3b and c). According
to the composition and selected area diffraction (SAD) pattern
(Fig. 3d), it could be inferred that the particles were mainly M
23
C
6
,
where Mrepresented Cr and Mo. The precipitation of the discrete
M
23
C
6
carbides was caused by carbide reactions during the aging
at 760
41 superalloy after solution and ageing treatment: (a) the columnar grain morphology, (b) different sizes of
precipitates in
different conditions were given in Table 1 for a clear comparison.
3.2. Tensile properties and hardness
The room temperature tensile properties of alloy Rene
41 in
the as-deposited, solution treated and solution-aged conditions
and a minimum allowable specication for Rene
41 as aeronau-
tical material [3] were given in Table 2. These results indicated
that after solution treatment, there was a drastic decrease in yield
strength (YS) and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) compared to the
as-deposited material while substantial improvement took place
in both the elongation (EL) and reduction in area (RA). In contrast
with the solution treated alloy, alloy in solution-aged condition
showed improvement of YS and UTS, but considerable drop in EL
and RA. Microhardness of samples under three different conditions
in Table 2 revealed that the hardness varied obviously, and both
the as-deposited and the solution-aged alloy showed considerable
high microhardness values compared to the minimum allowable
specication, with samples after solution-aged showed the highest
hardness. In conclusion, LMD Rene
41 failed
to meet the minimum allowable specication, with higher EL, RA
and microhardness but lower YS and UTS.
3.3. Fractography and sub-surface of fracture
The fracture surfaces of the solution treated alloy as well as
the solution-aged material were examined by SEM. The solution
treated material showed homogeneous deformation and fully dim-
pled rupture (Fig. 5), suggestive of a transgranular ductile mode of
failure responsible for the high value of elongation of about 42.2%.
In contrast to the solution treated alloy, the fracture sur-
face of the solution-aged material showed that lots of secondary
cracks (Fig. 6a) followed the columnar grain boundaries apparently
(Fig. 6b), moreover, thesurfacecontainedconsiderablenedimples
(Fig. 6c), the size of which is close to that of coalesced
, that is,
chains or blocks of several
(Fig. 6d).
Table 1
Size and morphology of
precipitates
LMD +solution-aged (16h) 7001700 (average length of
chains or blocks)
Short chains or blocks of several
particles
100 J. Li et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 550 (2012) 97102
Fig. 4. Micrographs of
C for (a) 12h, (b)14h, (c) 16h, showing short chains or blocks of
several particles which was induced by the coalescence of adjacent
dissolved
while some other coarse
re-precipitated
during cooling due to the reduction of solubility of Ti and Al in
matrix. However, no other types of carbides were detected after
solution treatment though a portion of MC carbides dissolved dur-
ing the process. This couldbe attributedto the highcooling rate and
the relatively sluggish precipitation dynamics of M
23
C
6
compared
to the relatively fast continuous precipitation kinetics of
phase.
The solution treated material then underwent an ageing treat-
ment and several microstructure changes occurred. The process
of growth of
precipitates to form
raft-like microstructures in the absence of applied stress was
reported in several alloys and was related to the magnitude of
the mist between
precipitates, M
23
C
6
carbides precipitated during
aging treatment due to the dissolution of partial MC carbides and
the release of C to the matrix.
Table 2
Mechanical properties and hardness of alloy Rene
41 evaluated at roomtemperature.
Material condition 0.2%YS (MPa) UTS (MPa) %EL %RA Hardness (HV)
As-deposited 8529.4 111735.1 212.5 22.71.5 426.588.5
LMD +1065
C/4h/AC +760
C/4h/AC +760
C/16h/AC
a
[3] 880 1175 12 12 400
a
The minimumallowable specication in manuscript.
J. Li et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 550 (2012) 97102 101
Fig. 5. Fractographs of the solution treated Rene
interface
became lost when the particles attained a certain size, and the
energy associated with the strained interface became too high,
thus the original ordered interface was replaced by a disordered
interface and interfacial dislocation networks formed. Generally,
strength of alloy was governed by the inverse of interparticle
spacing [20]. The increase of spacing between the coarsened
41 superalloy tested at room temperature: (a) overall view showing lots of secondary cracks and (b) revealing that the
secondary cracks follow the columnar grain boundaries, (c) high magnication view showing considerable ne dimples, (d) sub-surface of fracture revealing that the crack
propagated along the interface between and coalesced
.
102 J. Li et al. / Materials Science and Engineering A 550 (2012) 97102
5. Conclusions
The extensive precipitation of