Investigation of fatigue crack incubation and growth in cast MAR-M247 subjected to low cycle fatigue at room temperature

MC carbide particles (with Hafnium and/or Tantalum as constituent metallic element, M) were observed to crack extensively in a cast polycrystalline nickel-base superalloy, MAR-M247, when subjected to low-cycle fatigue loading at room temperature. High resolution secondary electron images taken on the surface of a double edge notch test specimen revealed that approximately half the carbide particles cracked in the highly-strained notch section of the specimen. These images further illustrated that the average surface area of cracked particles was approximately three times that of the uncracked particles. Additional analysis illustrated that the cracks within a large number of particles aligned nearly perpendicular to the loading direction. However, high aspect ratio particles (with aspect ratio $${>}3$$>3) were prone to incubate cracks aligned along its major axis, independent of the loading direction. Additionally, forward-scattered imaging often showed a high density of slip bands interaction with most of the particles which cracked. The life limiting crack growth in MAR-M247 was observed to be crystallographic in nature, as the crack grew along slip bands as measured by high-resolution electron backscatter diffraction, even after spanning many grains. Statistically representative microstructure models of MAR-M247 were generated and used in the crystal plasticity finite element simulations. As expected, there was a significant variation in the computed stress state among constituent carbide particles. The stress state of the carbide particles was found to be heavily influenced by the stress in surrounding grains and the orientation of the major axis of the particles with respect to applied load direction. For particles that intersect the free-surface, stress was found to be highly concentrated at the free surface and a positive correlation between the magnitude of free-surface area and the maximum principal stress was found. Additionally, high stress concentrations were observed in regions where carbide particles intersect grain boundaries.

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