Investigation on Fatigue Behavior of a Nickel Based Superalloy at Room and Elevated Temperature

Subject Areas :

Alimohammad Fazeli Tehrani ¹ , hassan farhangi ²

1 - PhD Student, Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran

Received: 2023-10-28 Accepted : 2024-07-06 Published : 2025-04-30

Keywords: Superalloy Directionally Solidified Fatigue Grain Boundary Temperature Crack Nucleation,

Abstract :

Nickel based superalloys are used to manufacture turbine blades because of their excellent mechanical properties at high temperatures. These blades are subjected to temperature fluctuations, oxidation, centrifugal and vibrational forces during service. As a result, mechanisms such as oxidation creep, fatigue facilitate damages and decrease the life of the component. Several researches have shown that decreasing the number of grain boundaries would increase the creep resistance of the blade at high temperatures. This was the beginning point of development of directionally solidified and single crystal microstructures for superalloys. In this research, the behavior of a directionally solidified Nickel based superalloy under cyclic mechanical loads was investigated. Isothermal fatigue tests were carried out at room and elevated temperatures in strain controlled condition. Coffin-Manson equation was plotted to study the relationship between the number of cycle to failure and applied plastic strain. Hysteresis loops of stress vs. strain were plotted to see the hardening and softening behavior of the superalloy under cyclic loading. Scanning electron microscopy was used to study patterns of crack nucleation and growth on the fracture surface of different samples. It was observed that at high temperature the hardening coefficient decreased in comparison with the coefficient at room temperature. Hysteresis at half-life showed microstructural softening, it was also found out the nucleation of the cracks occurred at oxide particles and small surface defects at both temperatures and the cracks grew transgranularly at room temperature while grain boundary cracking is observed at high temperature.

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