An investigation on quench cracking behavior of superalloy udimet 720LI using a fracture mechanics approach

Abstract

Quench cracking can be a serious problem in the heat treatment of high strength superalloys. A new fracture mechanics approach, quench cracking toughness (K _Q ), was introduced to evaluate the on-cooling quench cracking resistance of superalloy Udimet 720LI. A fully automatic computer controlled data acquisition and processing system was set up to track the on-cooling quenching process and to simulate the quench cracking. The influences of grain size, cooling rate, solution temperature, and alloy processing routes on quench cracking resistance were investigated. Research results indicate that quench cracking revealed a typical brittle and intergranular failure at high temperatures, which causes a lower quench cracking toughness in comparison to fracture toughness at room temperature. Fine grain structures show the higher quench cracking resistance and lower failure temperatures than intermediate grain structures at the same cooling rates. Moreover, higher cooling rate results in lower cracking toughness under the same grain size structures. In comparison of processing routes, powder metallurgy (PM) alloys show higher cracking resistance than cast and wrought (CW) alloys for fine grain structures at the same cooling rates. However, for intermediate grain structure, there is no obvious difference of K _Q between the two processing routes in this study.