Effect of a Prior Plastic Deformation during Heat Treatments on the Mechanical Properties of Ni-Based Superalloys for Turbine Blade Application

Ni-based single crystal (SX) superalloys are used for turbine blade applications because of their high-temperature durability. During the production of a turbine blade, unexpected plastic deformation (PD) can be introduced to the material. In this study, SX materials were pre-deformed in between solution and aging heat treatments to mimic PD during production. Mechanical tests on the pre-deformed materials have been performed to understand the effect of the prior PD.During aging treatments of pre-deformed AM1 SX superalloy, faster coarsening of γ′ precipitates and enhanced void nucleation were observed in the vicinity of slip bands which were introduced by PD at room-temperature. During creep deformation of pre-deformed AM1 at high temperature/low stress conditions (≥ 950 °C), the microstructure coarsened bands act as diffusion induced creep damage accumulating paths, further triggering recrystallization and resulting in drastic reduction of creep properties. At low temperature/high stress conditions (≤ 850 °C), microstructure shearing was facilitated in the microstructure coarsened band and it decreased creep properties. Recrystallization was not observed at lower temperature creep because the diffusion damage was suppressed. These relationships have been explained by creep tests on pre-deformed materials prepared by different pre-deformation temperatures and heat treatment procedures.CMSX-4 Plus SX superalloy was tested similarly to AM1 to understand the effect of the chemical composition. Effect of pre-deformation on alloy’s microstructure was mild in CMSX-4 Plus compared to that in AM1. Therefore, the predeformation did no exhibit large creep life debit in CMSX-4 Plus at temperatures lower than 1050 °C. However, during creep of CMSX-4 Plus at 1150 °C, pre-deformation presented huge impact on creep life and ductility by the same mechanisms as the ones observed for AM1 at 1050 °C.In order to restore properties of pre-deformed SX superalloys, rejuvenation heat treatment was added after PD.Rejuvenation treatment successfully restored microstructure after PD at room-temperature, and creep properties of rejuvenated specimens were shown to be equivalent to that of original AM1 and CMSX-4 Plus without PD