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Dendritic morphology evolution and microhardness enhancement of rapidly solidified Ni-based superalloys

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Abstract

The mechanisms of microstructure evolution and dendritic growth of Inconel alloys in a drop tube were investigated in this paper. The Vickers microhardness of the solidified alloy droplets was also measured to explore the effects of grain size and precipitated phase on the mechanical properties. From XRD results, the rapidly solidified Inconel 600, 617, 625, and 718 alloys are characterized by γ phase solid solution with fcc structure. Further analyses based on EDS and SEM reveal that Laves phase precipitates at the grain boundaries of γ phase in Inconel 718 alloy. With the decrease of droplet diameter (D), the dendritic morphology experiences a transformation of “orthogonal long dendrites→irregular stubby dendrites→equiaxed grains” in Inconel 600 alloy, “orthogonal long dendrites → stubby irregular dendrites” in Inconel 625 alloy and “orthogonal long dendrites→equiaxed grains” in Inconel 617 and 718 alloys. Although the dendrites become coarse locally, the dendritic grain size obviously reduces with the decrease of droplet diameter, leading to the increase of Vickers microhardness. For Inconel 718 alloy, the Vickers microhardness firstly decreases, when the droplet diameter decreases from 1000 to 900 µm, and then increases linearly with the decrease of droplet diameter. It is found that the Vickers microhardness of Inconel 625 alloy is the largest among the four alloys.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Physics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China

    Wei Liu, Na Yan & HaiPeng Wang

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  1. Wei Liu
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  2. Na Yan
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  3. HaiPeng Wang
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Correspondence to HaiPeng Wang.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51734008 & 51522102). The authors would like to thank the director of Laboratory of Space Materials Science and Technology (LMSS), Prof. B. Wei, for his consistent support. The authors are grateful to Mr. C. H. Zheng, Mr. B. Zhai, Mr M. X. Li, and Mr. J. F. Zhao for their valuable discussions. The authors also thank Dr. D. L. Gengfor his help on the experiments.

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Liu, W., Yan, N. & Wang, H. Dendritic morphology evolution and microhardness enhancement of rapidly solidified Ni-based superalloys. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 62, 1976–1986 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-019-9519-9

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