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Work conducted by NASA and NASA contractors on prealloyed superalloy powders and materials strengthened by oxide dispersion is reviewed. Fabrication, tensile strength, superplasticity, grain growth control, stress rupture life, and grain-size and dispersion-level effects are covered. Distinct strength advantages of powder metallurgy superalloys over conventional wrought alloys are noted.
A candidate alloy for advanced-temperature turbine engine disks, and four modifications of that alloy with various C and Hf concentrations were produced as cross-rolled disks from prealloyed powder that was hot isostatically compacted. The mechanical properties, microstructures, and phase relations of the alloys are discussed in terms of their C and Hf concentrations. A low-C and high-Hf modification of IIB-11 had the best balance of mechanical properties for service below about 750 C. Because of their finer grain sizes, none of the powder-metallurgy alloys produced had the high-temperature rupture strength of conventionally cast and wrought IIB-11.
In the last decade, Government/Industry programs have advanced powder metallurgy-near-net-shape technology to permit the use of hot isostatic pressed (HIP) turbine disks in the commercial aircraft fleet. These disks offer a 30% savings of input weight and an 8% savings in cost compared in cast-and-wrought disks. Similar savings were demonstrated for other rotating engine components. A compressor rotor fabricated from hot-die-forged-HIP superalloy billets revealed input weight savings of 54% and cost savings of 35% compared to cast-and-wrought parts. Engine components can be produced from compositions such as Rene 95 and Astroloy by conventional casting and forging, by forging of HIP powder billets, or by direct consolidation of powder by HIP. However, each process produces differences in microstructure or introduces different defects in the parts. As a result, their mechanical properties are not necessarily identical. Acceptance methods should be developed which recognize and account for the differences.
Hot isostatically pressed powder metallurgy Astroloy was obtained which contained 1.4 percent fine porosity at the grain boundaries produced by argon entering the powder container during pressing. This material was tested at 650 C in fatigue, creep fatigue, tension, and stress-rupture and the results compared with previous data on sound Astroloy. The pores averaged about 2 micrometers diameter and 20 micrometers spacing. They did influence fatigue crack initiation and produced a more intergranular mode of propagation. However, fatigue life was not drastically reduced. A large 25 micrometers pore in one specimen resulting from a hollow particle did not reduce life by 60 percent. Fatigue behavior of the porous material showed typical correlation with tensile behavior. The plastic strain range life relation was reduced proportionately with the reduction in tensile ductility, but the elastic strain range-life relation was little changed reflecting the small reduction in sigma sub u/E for the porous material.
An attempt was made to improve methods for producing powder metallurgy aircraft gas turbine engine parts from the nickel base superalloy known as Rene 95. The parts produced were the high pressure turbine aft shaft for the CF6-50 engine and the stages 5 through 9 compressor disk forgings for the CFM56/F101 engines. A 50% cost reduction was achieved as compared to conventional cast and wrought processing practices. An integrated effort involving several powder producers and a major forging source were included.
Hot-isostatically-pressed powder-metallurgy Astroloy was obtained which contained 1.4 percent porosity at the grain boundaries produced by argon entering the powder container during pressing. This material was tested at 650 C in fatigue, creep-fatigue, tension, and stress-rupture and the results compared with data on sound Astroloy. They influenced fatigue crack initiation and produced a more intergranular mode of propagation but fatigue life was not drastically reduced. Fatigue behavior of the porous material showed typical correlation with tensile behavior. The plastic strain range-life relation was reduced proportionately with the reduction in tensile ductility, but the elastic strain range-life relation was changed little.
Various applications of thermal plasma to extraction metallurgy and related fields are surveyed, chiefly on the basis of documents published during the past two or three years. Applications to melting and smelting, to thermal decomposition, to reduction, to manufacturing of inorganic compounds, and to other fields are considered.
Research was conducted on reinforcing nickel based matrices with alumina trichites by using powder metallurgy. Alumina trichites previously coated with nickel are magnetically aligned. The felt obtained is then sintered under a light pressure at a temperature just below the melting point of nickel. The halogenated atmosphere technique makes it possible to incorporate a large number of additive elements such as chromium, titanium, zirconium, tantalum, niobium, aluminum, etc. It does not appear that going from laboratory scale to a semi-industrial scale in production would create any major problems.
Aluminum alloys containing 10 to 11.5 wt. pct. of iron and 1.5 to 3 wt. pct. of chromium using the technique of rapid solidification powder metallurgy were studied. Alloys were prepared as thin ribbons (.002 inch thick) rapidly solidified at uniform rate of 10(6) C/second by the melt spinning process. The melt spun ribbons were pulverized into powders (-60 to 400 mesh) by a rotating hammer mill. The powders were consolidated by hot extrusion at a high reduction ratio of 50:1. The powder extrusion temperature was varied to determine the range of desirable processing conditions necessary to yield useful properties. Powders and consolidated alloys were characterized by SEM and optical metallography. The consolidated alloys were evaluated for (1) thermal stability, (2) tensile properties in the range, room temperature to 450 F, and (3) notch toughness in the range, room temperature to 450 F.
Because almost the entire U.S. consumption of cobalt depends on imports, this metal has been designated "strategic'. The role and effectiveness of cobalt is being evaluated in commercial nickel-base superalloys. Udiment 700 type alloys in which the cobalt content was reduced from the normal 17% down to 12.7%, 8.5%, 4.3%, and 0% were prepared by standard powder metallurgy techniques and hot isostatically pressed into billets. Mechanical testing and microstructural investigations were performed. The mechanical properties of alloys with reduced cobalt contents which were heat-treated identically were equal or better than those of the standard alloy, except that creep rates tended to increase as cobalt was reduced. The effects of long time exposures at 760 C on mechanical properties and at 760 C and 845 C on microstructures were determined. Decreased tensile properties and shorter rupture lives with increased creep rates were observed in alloy modifications. The exposures caused gamma prime particle coarsening and formation of sigma phase in the alloys with higher cobalt contents. Exposure at 845 C also reduced the amount of MC carbides.
Powder processing of Al-Li-Mg and Al-Li-Cu alloys by mechanical alloying (MA) is described, with a discussion of physical and mechanical properties of early experimental alloys of these compositions. The experimental samples were mechanically alloyed in a Szegvari attritor, extruded at 343 and 427 C, and some were solution-treated at 520 and 566 C and naturally, as well as artificially, aged at 170, 190, and 210 C for times of up to 1000 hours. All alloys exhibited maximum hardness after being aged at 170 C; lower hardness corresponds to the solution treatment at 566 C than to that at 520 C. A comparison with ingot metallurgy alloys of the same composition shows the MA material to be stronger and more ductile. It is also noted that properly aged MA alloys can develop a better combination of yield strength and notched toughness at lower alloying levels.
Nickel was substituted in various proportions for cobalt in a series of five hot-isostatically-pressed powder metallurgy alloys based on the UDIMET 700 composition. These alloys were given 5-step heat treatments appropriate for use in turbine engine disks. The resultant microstructures displayed three distinct sizes of gamma-prime particles in a gamma matrix. The higher cobalt-content alloys contained larger amounts of the finest gamma-prime particles, and had the lowest gamma-gamma-prime lattice mismatch. While all alloys had approximately the same tensile properties at 25 and 650 gamma C, the rupture lives at 650 and 760 C peaked in the alloys with cobalt contents between 12.7 and 4.3 pct. Minimum creep rates increased as cobalt contents were lowered, suggesting their correlation with the gamma-prime particle size distribution and the gamma-gamma-prime mismatch. It was also found that, on overaging at temperatures higher than suitable for turbine disk use, the high cobalt-content alloys were prone to sigma phase formation.
Highly-stressed jet-engine parts made with less cobalt. Udimet 700* (or equivalent) is common nickel-based superalloy used in hot sections of jet engines for many years. This alloy, while normally used in wrought condition, also gas-atomized into prealloyed powder-metallurgy (PM) product. Product can be consolidated by hot isostatically pressing (HIPPM condition) and formed into parts such as turbine disk. Such jet-engine disks "see" both high stresses and temperatures to 1,400 degrees F (760 degrees C).
Report describes experimental study of thermal responses and aging behaviors of three new aluminum alloys. Alloys produced from rapidly solidified powders and contain 3.20 to 5.15 percent copper, 0.24 to 1.73 percent magnesium, 0.08 to 0.92 percent iron, and smaller amounts of manganese, nickel, titanium, silicon, and zinc. Peak hardness achieved at lower aging temperatures than with standard ingot-metallurgy alloys. Alloys of interest for automobile, aircraft, and aerospace applications.
Rapid-solidification processing yields alloys with improved properties. Study undertaken to extend favorable property combinations of I/M 2XXX alloys through recently developed technique of rapid-solidification processing using powder metallurgy(P/M). Rapid-solidification processing involves impingement of molten metal stream onto rapidly-spinning chill block or through gas medium using gas atomization technique.
Traditionally, vacuum melted 440C stainless steel is used for high performance bearings for aerospace cryogenic systems where corrosion due to condensation is a major concern. For the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), however, 440C performance in the high-pressure turbopumps has been marginal. A basic assumption of this study was that powder metallurgy, rather than cast/wrought, processing would provide the finest, most homogeneous bearing alloy structure. Preliminary testing of P/M alloys (hardness, corrosion resistance, wear resistance, fatigue resistance, and fracture toughness) was used to 'de-select' alloys which did perform as well as baseline 440C. Five out of eleven candidate materials (14-4/6V, X-405, MRC-2001, T-440V, and D-5) based on preliminary screening were selected for the actual rolling-sliding five-ball testing. The results of this test were compared with high-performance vacuum-melted M50 bearing steel. The results of the testing indicated outstanding performance of two P/M alloys, X-405 and MRC-2001, which eventually will be further evaluated by full-scale bearing testing.
Eight superalloys derived from Udimet 700 were prepared by powder metallurgy, hot isostatically pressed, heat treated and their tensile and creep rupture properties determined. Several of these alloys displayed properties superior to those of Udimet 700 similarly prepared, in one case exceeding the creep rupture life tenfold. Filter clogging by extracted gamma prime, its measurement and significance are discussed in an appendix.
This paper describes a research program to develop and evaluate a new high temperature, self-lubricating powder metallurgy composite, PM212. PM212 has the same composition as the plasma-sprayed coating, PS212, which contains 70 wt percent metal-bonded chromium carbide, 15 wt percent silver and 15 wt percent barium fluoride/calcium fluoride eutectic. The carbide acts as a wear resistant matrix and the silver and fluorides act as low and high temperature lubricants, respectively. The material is prepared by sequential cold press, cold isostatic pressing and sintering techniques. In this study, hemispherically tipped wear pins of PM212 were prepared and slid against superalloy disks at temperatures from 25 to 850 C in air in a pin-on-disk tribometer. Friction coefficients range from 0.29 to 0.38 and the wear of both the composite pins and superalloy disks was moderate to low in the 10(exp -5) to 10(exp -6) cubic mm/N-m range. Preliminary tests indicate that the material has a compressive strength of at least 130 MPa over the entire temperature range of 25 to 900 C. This material has promise for use as seal inserts, bushings, small inside diameter parts and other applications where plasma-sprayed coatings are impractical or too costly.