Effect of growth rate on characteristic lengths of microstructure in directionally solidified

Abstract

The microstructure of TiAl based alloys is sensitive to growth rates. In this paper, Bridgman directional solidification of Ti-46Al-2Cr-2Nb-0.2B (at.%) alloy was carried out at a constant temperature gradient (G) to investigate the effects of various growth rates (v) on characteristic lengths (primary dendritic arm spacing, secondary dendritic arm spacing and lamellar spacing) of the microstructure. Results show that under the experimental conditions of G = 18 K·m-1 and v = 15 μm·s-1 to 70 μm·s-1, the primary phase of directionally solidified Ti-46Al-2Cr-2Nb-0.2B alloy is α phase, the values of primary dendritic arm spacing (λ1), secondary dendritic arm spacing (λ2) and lamellar spacing (λ1a) decrease with the increase in growth rate. The results were compared with theoretical models and similar experimental results of TiAl based alloys. The Bouchard-Kirkaldy model agrees well with the relationship between primary dendritic arm spacing and growth rate obtained in the experiment; the relationship between them can be expressed by λ1 = 758.6v-0.39. The relationship between the secondary dendritic arm spacing and the growth rate can be expressed by λ2 = 113.9v-0.45, while the relationship between the lamellar spacing and growth rate can be expressed by λ1a = 22.88v-0.94.

Keywords

• TiAl-based alloy
• directional solidification
• microstructure evolution