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Influence of Cooling Rate During Solidification on Microstructural Features and γ′ Size and Morphology in Cast IN939 Superalloy

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Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of solidification cooling rate on the microstructural characteristics of IN939 superalloy. Microstructure of castings was investigated using X-ray diffraction, optical microscopy and field emission SEM microscopes, and the most important phases in the microstructure, their morphology and micro-mechanisms of formation of these phases were evaluated. In addition, thermodynamic simulation was carried out using JMatPro software to predict the type and amount of phases in different microstructural regions, the chemical compositions of γ and γ′ phases, as well as the γ/γ′ lattice misfits. The results showed that with increasing the cooling rate, MC carbides became more regular and more polygonal, while with decreasing cooling rates, carbides morphologies changed to Chinese script form. At cooling rates around 0.13 °C/s, the γ′ particles in dendrite cores were formed into coarse and cubic patterns, whereas in interdendritic regions, γ′ particles were observed as very coarse and flower-like structures. At cooling rates around 1.1 °C/s, the morphology of γ′ precipitates in the dendrite cores was mainly spherical, and in the interdendritic areas, γ′ precipitates were a mixture of spherical and cubic particles. It was shown that the major factors controlling the morphology of γ′ particles in different regions of the microstructure are the size of these particles combined with the γ/γ′ lattice misfit. Finally, the results showed that the following equation relates the secondary dendrite arm spacing (SDAS) to the solidification cooling rate (SCR) for IN939 superalloy: SDAS = 43.177 (SCR)−0.305.

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    Mohammadreza Jahangiri

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Jahangiri, M. Influence of Cooling Rate During Solidification on Microstructural Features and γ′ Size and Morphology in Cast IN939 Superalloy. Inter Metalcast (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40962-023-01183-7

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