A Comparison of the Plastic-Flow Response of a Powder-Metallurgy Nickel-Base Superalloy Under Nominally-Isothermal and Transient-Heating Hot-Working Conditions

The flow-stress behavior at hot-working temperatures and strain rates of the powder-metallurgy superalloy LSHR was determined under nominally-isothermal and transient-heating conditions. Two conventional methods, compression of right-circular cylinders and torsion of thin-walled tubes, were used for isothermal tests. A direct-resistance-heating technique utilizing torsion of round-bar specimens in a Gleeble^® machine was applied for both isothermal and transient-heating conditions. When expressed in terms of effective stress and strain, baseline data determined by the two conventional methods showed good agreement. With the aid of a flow-localization analysis to assess the confounding influence of axial (and radial) temperature gradients on deformation uniformity, the flow stresses determined from nominally-isothermal Gleeble^® torsion tests were shown to be broadly similar to those from the conventional tests. With regard to transient phenomena, Gleeble^® tests were also useful in quantifying the effect of rapid heating and short soak time on the observed higher flow stress associated with a metastable microstructure. The present work also introduces two new test techniques using direct-resistance-heated torsion specimens. One involves continuous heating under constant-torque conditions, and the other comprises testing an individual specimen at a series of temperatures and strain rates. Using a single specimen, the former method enabled the determination of the apparent activation energy for plastic flow, which was similar to that determined from the series of isothermal tests; the latter provided a low-cost, high-throughput approach to quantify the flow behavior.