Modeling of Unidirectional Growth in a Single Crystal Turbine Blade Casting

Single crystal superalloy turbine blade are widely used in aero-engineering. However, there are often grain defects occurring during the fabrication of blade by casting. It is important to study the formation of microstructure related defects in turbine blades. Single crystal blade sample castings of a nickel-base superalloy were produced at different withdrawal rates by the directional solidification process and investment casting. There was a difference between the microstructure morphology at the top part of the turbine blade sample castings and the one at the bottom. Higher withdrawal rates led to more differences in the microstructure and a higher probability of crystallographic defect formation such as high angle boundaries at locations with an abrupt change of the transversal section area. To further investigate the formation of grain defects, a numerical simulation technique was used to predict the crystallographic defects occurring during directional solidification. The simulation results agreed with the experimental ones.