The increasing technological need to push service conditions of structural materials to higher temperatures has motivated the development of several alloy systems. Among them, superalloys are an excellent candidate for high temperature applications because of their ability to form coherent ordered precipitates, which enable the retention of high strength close to their melting temperature. The accelerated kinetics of solute diffusion, with or without an added component of mechanical stress, leads to coarsening of the precipitates, and results in microstructural degradation, limiting the durability of the materials. Hence, the coarsening of precipitates has been a classical research problem for these alloys in service. The prolonged hunt for an alternative of nickel base superalloys with superior traits has gained hope after the recent discovery of Co-Al-W based alloys, which readily form high temperature g precipitates, similar to Ni base superalloys. In the present study, coarsening behavior of g precipitates in Co-10Al-10W (at. %) has been carried out at 800°C and 900°C. This study has, for the first time, obtained critical coarsening parameters in cobalt-base alloys. Apart from this, it has incorporated atomic scale compositional information across the g/g interfaces into classical Cahn-Hilliard model for a better model of coarsening kinetics. The coarsening study of g precipitates in Ni-14Al-7 Cr (at. %) has shown the importance of temporal evolution of the compositional width of the g/g interfaces to the coarsening kinetics of g precipitates. This study has introduced a novel, reproducible characterization method of crystallographic study of ordered phase by coupling of orientation microscopy with atom probe tomography (APT). Along with the detailed analysis of field evaporation behaviors of Ni and Co superalloys in APT, the present study determines the site occupancy of various solutes within ordered g precipitates in both Ni and Co superalloys. This study has explained the role of structural and compositional gradients across the precipitates (g)/matrix (g) interfaces on the coarsening behavior of coherent precipitates in both Ni and Co-base superalloys. The observation of two interfacial widths, one corresponding to a structural order-disorder transition, and the other to the compositional transition across the interface, raises fundamental questions regarding the definition of the interfacial width in such systems. The comparative interface analysis in Co and Ni superalloy shows significant differences, which gives insights to the coarsening behaviors of g precipitates in these alloys. Hence, the principal goal of this work is to compare and contrast the Co and Ni superalloys and also, to accommodate atomic scale information related to transitions across interfaces to coarsening models for a better practical applicability of coarsening laws to various alloys.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc699871 |
| Date | 08 1900 |
| Creators | Meher, Subhashish |
| Contributors | Banerjee, Rajarshi, Williams, James C., Dahotre, Narendra B., Young, Marcus L., Mukherjee, Sundeep |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | xiii, 149 pages : illustrations (some color), Text |
| Rights | Public, Meher, Subhashish, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. |
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