Crystal plasticity and crack initiation in a single-crystal nickel-base superalloy : Modelling, evaluation and appliations

Abstract: In this dissertation the work done in the projects KME-410/502 will be presented.The overall objective in these projects is to evaluate and develop tools for designingagainst fatigue in single-crystal nickel-base superalloys in gas turbines. Experimentshave been done on single-crystal nickel-base superalloy specimens in order toinvestigate the mechanical and fatigue behaviour of the material. The constitutivebehaviour has been modelled and veried by FE-simulations of the experiments.Furthermore, the microstructural degradation during long-time ageing has been investigatedwith respect to the material's yield limit. The eect has been includedin the constitutive model by lowering the resulting yield limit. Moreover, the fatiguecrack initiation of a component has been analysed and modelled by using acritical plane approach in combination with a critical distance method. Finally, asan application, the derived single-crystal model was applied to all the individualgrains in a coarse grained specimen to predict the dispersion in fatigue crack initiationlife depending on random grain distributions.This thesis is divided into three parts. In the rst part the theoretical framework,based upon continuum mechanics, crystal plasticity, the critical plane approachand the critical distance method, is derived. This framework is then used in thesecond part, which consists of six included papers. Finally, in the third part, detailsof the used numerical procedures are presented.