Simulation of competitive grain growth upon the directional solidification of a Ni-base superalloy

Abstract

Using the numerical simulation in the CA-FE module of the ProCAST simulation program, a systematic investigation of competitive growth of grains in a thin plate has been performed over a wide range of values of the temperature gradient and solidification rate. It has been established that the result of the simulation in the case of converging grains depends on the only parameter, i.e., the ratio of the value of the overgrowth of the grain with the preferred orientation to the size of the cell of the computational grid. Thus, the size of the cell is an important adjusting parameter of the model and must be coordinated with the parameters of the dendritic structure under given growth conditions. The grain with the preferred orientation always displaces neighboring diverging grains. The converging grains are eliminated if their deviation from the vector of the temperature gradient exceeds 20°. At the smaller angles of deviation, the result of the competitive growth depends on the size of the computational cell and varies from their joint growth (at the cell size of 5 μm) to the displacement of grains with the preferred orientation (at the cell size of 20 μm). However, all of the results of the simulation agree with the experimental data available in the literature. For the efficient selection of grains with the preferred orientation, regimes with a low temperature gradient and high growth rate are favorable.