Grain boundary cavitation under various states of applied stress

Abstract

Submicrometre grain boundary cavities are produced in Nimonic 80A when plastic deformation in any of three different stress states is followed by a short anneal. Tension, torsion and compression specimens were plastically strained in a systematic manner and then annealed for 2 h at 750 °C. Detailed quantitative observations with a 1 MV microscope showed that the number of cavities per unit volume was a function of the shear strain and independent of the stress state. Furthermore the measurements revealed the surprising result that most cavities were on those grain boundaries which were parallel to the maximum principal stress axis. However, Preferential cavity growth occurred during subsequent tensile creep and cavities on these parallel boundaries either remained constant in size or diminished while those on boundaries which were orthogonal to the applied stress axis grew relatively quickly, thus producing the usual appearance of cavitated tensile samples. Plastic strain was more detrimental to torsional creep ductility when the direction of torque between plastic deformation and creep was reversed which is in accordance with the anisotropic cavitated boundary distribution. The results are compatible with the hypothesis that cavities are produced by grain interior slip and stabilized by plastic deformation induced internal tensile stresses.