Abstract
In this study, the microstructural evolution of an Fe-Cr-Al system was simulated in two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) systems using the phase-field method. We investigated the effect of Al concentration on the microstructural evolution of the systems, with a focus on the nucleation and growth of the Cr-rich α′ phase. In addition, we quantitatively analyzed the mechanism of the effect of Al concentration on the microstructural characteristics of the 2D and 3D systems, such as the number of precipitates, average precipitate area (volume), and α′ phase fraction. In particular, we analyzed the effect of Al concentration and the dimensions of the system cell on the formation of the interconnected structure at high Cr concentrations, such as 35 Crat% and 40 Crat%. To enhance the performance of the simulations, we applied a semi-implicit Fourier spectral method for the ternary system and a parallel graphics processing unit computing technique. The results revealed that the initiation of phase separation in the 2D and 3D simulations was enhanced with an increase in the average Al concentration in the system. In addition, with an increase in the average Al concentration in both systems, the α′ phase fraction increased, while the change in the phase fraction decreased.
Highlights
Fe-Cr-based alloys are widely used in various fields, owing to their excellent corrosion resistance and high temperature strength [1,2,3,4]
The effect of Al concentration on the microstructural evolution of an Fe-Cr-Al system was investigated using the phase-field method. In both the 2D and 3D simulations, an increase in the average Al concentration enhanced the initiation of phase separation
With an increase in the average Al concentration, the phase fraction increased, while the change in the phase fraction decreased, which is consistent with the thermodynamic results
Summary
Fe-Cr-based alloys are widely used in various fields, owing to their excellent corrosion resistance and high temperature strength [1,2,3,4]. The addition of Al to Fe-Cr alloys has been considered as an effective method to improve the mechanical properties of Fe-Cr-Al systems, owing to their effects on the behaviors of microstructures [5,6,7,8,9]. Fe-Cr-Al alloys have received extensive attention in various fields, owing to their excellent radiation tolerance [9,10,11] and corrosion resistance at high temperatures [6,12,13,14,15]. In this study, we simulated the spinodal decomposition in an Fe-Cr-Al system using the phase-field method and CALPHAD approach to quantitatively evaluate the effect of Al in Fe-Cr-Al systems. Parallel computation was performed using different GPUs, such as the NVidia V100 or RTX 2080Ti
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