Microscopic Phase-field Simulation of Effects of Re-ageing Temperature on Precipitation of Ni-Al-Cr Alloys

This article, by means of the ternary microscopic phase-field model, investigates the effects of re-ageing temperature on the precipitation of Ni₇₅Al₁₀Cr₁₅ alloy with the help of atomic pictures, order parameters, particle density, averaged radii, and volume fractions. During pre-ageing at 873 K, DO₂₂ phases first appear through spinodal decomposition mechanism, and then L1₂ phases begin to form on the DO₂₂ phase-boundaries through non-classical nucleation mechanism. In either of them, ordering process is obviously faster than atom clustering. At the late stage of re-ageing at 923 K, the elastic strain energy seems to exert stronger effects on microstructure, and DO₂₂ and L1₂ phases exhibit directional alignment along <100> direction to a certain extent. When the temperature increases to 1 023 K, the influence of elastic strain energy begins to weaken, and the precipitated phases become randomly distributed in the matrix. The volume fraction of DO₂₂ phase decreases to zero, whereas that of L1₂ phase first increases and then decreases with the temperature rising from 923 K to 1 123 K. On the whole, the effects of elastic strain energy make the coarsening behavior of both phases deviate from the time-law predictions by LSW diffusion-controlled growth theory.