The Effect of Annealing on the Hardness and Microstructural Characterization of TM-321 Superalloy

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• abolfazl rastegaran
• Masumeh Seifollahi
• adly Akhond Zadeh

Faculty of Materials and Manufacturing Technologies, Malek Ashtar University of Technology, Iran.

10.22067/jmme.2025.87922.1148

Abstract

In this research, the effects of solution annealing heat treatment on the hardness and microstructure characteristic of TM-321 Ni base superalloy are investigated. The temperature of annealing was chosen on the basis of thermodynamic analysis of Procast 2018 for TM-321 superalloy. At 1080°C the volume percent of γ/γ′ eutectic pool which was 9 Vol% in the as cast structure reduced to 1.7 vol% at 4h and it is stable till 6h. At 1180°C again it is considerably decreased to 1.2 vol%. At 1180°C and times more than 2h, numerous and fine clusters of γ′ precipitates formed. The formation of γ′ precipitates clusters will disrupt the creation of the proper distribution of γ′ precipitates. At 1180°C/2h, the lowest eutectic volume fraction (0.9%), the highest dissolution and reduction in the fraction and size of primary γ′ (21.5% and 84nm) are present, which has been chosen as the best conditions for solutionizing in this research.

Keywords

• TM-321 superalloy
• solution annealing
• γ/γ′ eutectic
• γ′ precipitate

Main Subjects

• Physical Metallurgy

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