Microstructure evolutions of a powder metallurgy superalloy during high-strain-rate deformation

Abstract

To investigate the microstructure evolution of powder metallurgy (P/M) superalloys during high-strain-rate deformation, a P/M nickel-base superalloy is subjected to thermal compression at temperatures ranging from 1000 °C to 1100 °C and strain rates ranging from 1 s−1 to 10 s−1. The analysis regarding the flow behaviors and microstructure observation indicates that discontinuous softening is significant at high strain rates. Moreover, based on experimental measurement and theoretic estimation, the adiabatic heating under high-strain-rate deformation is hardly neglectable, which enhances the dynamic softening via dynamic recovery (DRV), dynamic recrystallization (DRX), and grain growth. In order to obtain refined and homogeneous grains, deformation at temperature range of 1025–1050 °C with strain rate rang of 1–10 s−1 or at 1000 °C/1 s−1 is suggested for high-strain-rate compression on the P/M superalloy, where DRX plays more dominating roles.