Microstructure and Fatigue Crack Growth Behavior of Inconel 718 Superalloy Fabricated Via Laser Directed Energy Deposition Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

This work investigated the microstructure and its influence on room-temperature fatigue crack growth (FCG) behavior of Inconel 718 (IN718) alloy fabricated with laser-based directed energy deposition (L-DED). As-deposited specimens were heat-treated by direct aging (DA), solution treatment + aging (SA) and homogenization + solution treatment + aging (HSA) respectively to investigate the effect of post-heat-treatment. On comparison with as-deposited microstructure, which mainly consists of γ dendrite and Laves phases in the interdendritic regions. Dendritic segregation still appears after DA heat-treatment, which is certified to alter the precipitation kinetics of γ′′/γ′ precipitations of IN718 and induce the formation of more abundant γ′′/γ′ precipitations in interdendritic Nb-rich regions versus the dendritic trunk regions. After SA heat-treatment, Nb released from the dissolution of Laves phase is prone to diffuse to the ambient interdendritic regions, which facilitates the formation of δ-phase and the homogeneous precipitations of γ′′/γ′ phases in dendritic trunk region. After HSA heat-treatment, the Laves phases are eliminated completely, the dispersive γ′′/γ′ precipitates (~30 nm) are distributed within the bimodal recrystallized grains. The results of FCG testing reveal that as-deposited specimen possesses the lowest threshold for fatigue-crack initiation (ΔKth) and the highest FCG rate (FCGR). The ΔKth and FCGR of DA specimen do not have the notable improvement versus those of as-deposited specimen, due to its inferior strength-plasticity mainly caused by heterogeneous γ′′/γ′ phases and Laves particles. The fatigue-crack propagates easily along the precipitate-free zone around short-acicular δ-phase, which causes the crack branching and deflection, enhances the resistance to FCG of SA specimen to some extent. The ΔKth of HSA specimen increases by ~2.6 times compared with as-deposited specimen and reaches 10.8 MPa∙m1/2, due to its decent strength-plasticity (~1130 MPa, ~26.5%). Especially, the ΔKth and FCGR of HSA specimen are comparable to that of the wrought IN718. The FCG behaviors of all specimens predominantly occur in the transgranular ductile fracture mode. Overall, the present study demonstrates that a judicious post-heat-treatment can enhance the damage tolerance of L-DED IN718 by increasing ΔKth and decreasing FCGR.