Dissolution of the Primary γ′ Precipitates and Grain Growth during Solution Treatment of Three Nickel Base Superalloys

Abstract

Second phase particles (SPP) play an essential role in controlling grain size and properties of polycrystalline nickel base superalloys. The understanding of the behavior of these precipitates is of prime importance in predicting microstructure evolutions. The dissolution kinetics of the primary γ′ precipitates during subsolvus solution treatments were investigated for three nickel base superalloys (René 65, AD730 and N19). A temperature-time codependency equation was established to describe the evolution of primary γ′ precipitates of each material using experimental data, the Thermo-Calc software and the Johnson–Mehl–Avrami–Kolmogorov (JMAK) model. The dissolution kinetics of precipitates was also simulated using the level-set (LS) method and the former phenomenological model. The precipitates are represented using an additional LS function and a numerical treatment around grain boundaries in the vicinity of the precipitates is applied to reproduce their pinning pressure correctly. Thus, considering the actual precipitate dissolution, these simulations aim to predict grain size evolution in the transient and stable states. Furthermore, it is illustrated how a population of Prior Particle Boundaries (PPB) particles can be considered in the numerical framework in order to reproduce the grain size evolution in the powder metallurgy N19 superalloy. The proposed full-field strategy is validated and the obtained results are in good agreement with experimental data regarding the precipitates and grain size.