Phase-Field Simulation of the Microstructure Evolution in the Eutectic Alloy NiAl-31Cr-3Mo

Abstract

The directionally solidified eutectic alloy NiAl-(Cr,Mo) is a promising candidate for structural applications at high temperatures, due to its increased creep resistance compared to its single phase B2ordered NiAl counterpart. This system yields an eutectic trough connecting the invariant reactions of the ternary alloys NiAl-Cr and NiAl-Mo. During directional solidification (DS) along this trough the evolved microstructures of the two-phase eutectic is changing from fibrous to lamellar and back to fibrous morphology while increasing and decreasing the amounts of Mo and Cr, respectively. To investigate these effects in the morphology, the phase-field method has proven to be predestined in the last decades. However, as the modeling of quaternary systems is challenging for the simulation with a grand potential based phase-field model, the focus of this work is on the generation of a material model for one defined compound namely NiAl-31Cr-3Mo. The modeling is validated by investigating the microstructure evolution in two- and three-dimensional simulations of the DS process for two different growth velocities and by investigating their undercooling spacing relationships. The evolving microstructures obtained from three-dimensional large-scale simulations are presented and validated with corresponding micrographs from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of directionally solidified samples with the same growth velocities. The simulation results show the theoretically expected behaviors and are in qualitative and quantitative accordance with DS experiments. The study of NiAl-31Cr-3Mo serves as the basis for a comprehensive data-driven analysis of microstructure properties and system quantities of the entire quaternary material NiAl-(Cr,Mo). With this, an accelerated design of advanced materials is promoted.