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Morphological evolution of γ′ precipitate under various rejuvenation heat treatment cycles in a damaged nickel-based superalloy

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Abstract

The morphological evolution of γ′ precipitates for a damaged nickel-based superalloy GTD-111 under different rejuvenation heat treatments (RHTs) was investigated. The degenerated γ′ precipitates can be completely dissolved into the γ matrix under the full solution condition of 1200 °C/2 h, and only fine γ′ precipitates re-precipitated during the cooling stage of the full solution can be observed, but these fine γ′ precipitates cannot grow continuously to be similar as those in virgin alloy during the subsequent long-term aging. It is found that the newly developed RHT schedule, including the full solution, the partial solution, and the aging treatments, can effectively recover the degenerated γ′ precipitates in the GTD-111 superalloy to their original state. Moreover, the effects of different RHT cycles on the γ′ evolution were investigated. The experimental results show that the degenerated γ′ precipitates can be restored to be analogous with those in virgin alloy by slow cooling after the full solution and an appropriate partial solution followed by the long-term aging. Compared with the different microhardness under various RHT schedules, the microhardness after full solution and partial solution followed by aging is more close to that of the initial alloy.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by the University-Industry Cooperation Project from Aviation Industry Corporation of China (No. cxy2010BH06).

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Correspondence to Zheng Zhang.

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Wang, XM., Zhou, Y., Wang, TY. et al. Morphological evolution of γ′ precipitate under various rejuvenation heat treatment cycles in a damaged nickel-based superalloy. Rare Met. 42, 645–650 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-015-0687-y

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