Recrystallization of A Shot Peened Single Crystal Nickel-Base Superalloy

Single crystal nickel-base superalloys used as turbine engine airfoils can have much higher creep and
thermal fatigue resistance required for blades and vanes than polycrystalline superalloys due to the
absence of weak grain boundaries, as well as the low elastic modulus in the [001] single crystal growth
direction (Refs. 1 and 2). This has allowed an increase in the turbine rim inlet temperatures for improved
performance and efficiency. However, these advantages in performance require constraints on acceptable levels of single crystal defects, such as macroscopic grain boundaries at low angles to the primary grain (i.e., low angle boundaries or LAB), higher angle boundaries, small new grains nucleated at the blade surface (a.k.a. freckles), larger new grains, and also the single crystal blades’ orientation, typically degrees off of the [001] direction and the orientation of a transverse [010] direction with respect to blade geometry. Therefore, single crystal turbine airfoils, which are frequently used with as-cast surfaces, are grain etched and inspected before and after heat treatments to ensure these aspects conform to acceptability limits.