Influence of composition and precipitation evolution on damage at grain boundaries in a crept polycrystalline Ni-based superalloy

© 2018 Acta Materialia Inc. The microstructural and compositional evolution of intergranular carbides and borides prior to and after creep deformation at 850 °C in a polycrystalline nickel-based superalloy was studied. Primary MC carbides, enveloped within intergranular γ′ layers, decomposed resulting in the formation of layers of the undesirable η phase. These layers have a composition corresponding to Ni3Ta as measured by atom probe tomography and their structure is consistent with the D024 hexagonal structure as revealed by transmission electron microscopy. Electron backscattered diffraction reveals that they assume various misorientations with regard to the adjacent grains. As a consequence, these layers act as brittle recrystallized zones and crack initiation sites. The composition of the MC carbides after creep was altered substantially, with the Ta content decreasing and the Hf and Zr contents increasing, suggesting a beneficial effect of Hf and Zr additions on the stability of MC carbides. By contrast, M5B3 borides were found to be microstructurally stable after creep and without substantial compositional changes. Borides at 850 °C were found to coarsen, resulting in some cases into γ′- depleted zones, where, however, no cracks were observed. The major consequences of secondary phases on the microstructural stability of superalloys during the design of new polycrystalline superalloys are discussed

Decomposition of fractional quantum Hall states: New symmetries and approximations

We provide a detailed description of a new symmetry structure of the monomial (Slater) expansion coefficients of bosonic (fermionic) fractional quantum Hall states first obtained in Ref. 1, which we now extend to spin-singlet states. We show that the Haldane-Rezayi spin-singlet state can be obtained without exact diagonalization through a differential equation method that we conjecture to be generic to other FQH model states. The symmetry rules in Ref. 1 as well as the ones we obtain for the spin singlet states allow us to build approximations of FQH states that exhibit increasing overlap with the exact state (as a function of system size). We show that these overlaps reach unity in the thermodynamic limit even though our approximation omits more than half of the Hilbert space. We show that the product rule is valid for any FQH state which can be written as an expectation value of parafermionic operators.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figure

Finite element simulation of sintering of metal-bonded grinding wheels

The grinding wheel properties porosity, particle distribution and the grain holding force influence the surface roughness of the machined workpiece and the performance of the grinding process. These properties of a grinding wheel are in turn defined during tool production. However, the adaptation of the properties of a grinding wheel to the specific grinding task is currently based on empirical knowledge and experience. Understanding the interdependencies from the initial manufacturing to the final grinding results is the key to achieve the target-oriented generation of the grinding wheel properties for the grinding task at hand. With regard to the large number of powder particles for the manufacturing of metal-bonded grinding wheels, an analytical investigation of the powder metallurgical processes is not suitable. Numerical simulations offer a cost and time saving alternative to provide information on the sintering behavior and gain knowledge on the acting mechanism. In this article the sintering of a metal-bonded diamond grinding wheel is modelled and the obtained results are connected to material properties of the resulting grinding layer

Generation of x-ray radiation in a storage ring by a superconductive cold-bore invacuum undulator

The first beam measurements with a cold-bore superconducting in-vacuum undulator in a storage ring are reported. Undulators are x-ray generators in light sources. The physical limitations of these devices limit the intensity and the brilliance of the x-ray beam. At present the undulators are made from permanent magnets. It was shown in earlier papers that at low electron beam intensities superconductive wires in the vacuum beam pipe can overcome the limitations inherent to permanent magnet undulators. It was argued that the use of these novel devices in light sources with high beam currents may be limited by the extreme anomalous skin effect regime in Cu at 4.2 K, which has so far undergone very little investigation, and the power deposited by the infrared part of the synchrotron radiation. The purpose of this paper is to present measurements of these effects at the synchrotron light source ANKA with stored currents up to 200 mA

Secondary mineral formation associated with respiration of nontronite, NAu-1 by iron reducing bacteria

Experimental batch and miscible-flow cultures were studied in order to determine the mechanistic pathways of microbial Fe(III) respiration in ferruginous smectite clay, NAu-1. The primary purpose was to resolve if alteration of smectite and release of Fe precedes microbial respiration. Alteration of NAu-1, represented by the morphological and mineralogical changes, occurred regardless of the extent of microbial Fe(III) reduction in all of our experimental systems, including those that contained heat-killed bacteria and those in which O(2), rather than Fe(III), was the primary terminal electron acceptor. The solid alteration products observed under transmission electron microscopy included poorly crystalline smectite with diffuse electron diffraction signals, discrete grains of Fe-free amorphous aluminosilicate with increased Al/Si ratio, Fe-rich grains, and amorphous Si globules in the immediate vicinity of bacterial cells and extracellular polymeric substances. In reducing systems, Fe was also found as siderite. The small amount of Fe partitioned to the aqueous phase was primarily in the form of dissolved Fe(III) species even in the systems in which Fe(III) was the primary terminal electron acceptor for microbial respiration. From these observations, we conclude that microbial respiration of Fe(III) in our laboratory systems proceeded through the following: (1) alteration of NAu-1 and concurrent release of Fe(III) from the octahedral sheets of NAu-1; and (2) subsequent microbial respiration of Fe(III)

Deformation-Induced Martensite: A New Paradigm for Exceptional Steels

Atom-probe tomography (APT) and synchrotron X-ray diffraction (XRD) were combined to study the carbon supersaturation of ferrite for two pearlitic steel-wire compositions, eutectoid and hypereutectoid. The samples were cold-drawn at different strains up to true drawing strains for the eutectoid steel and the hypereutectoid steel, respectively. The wire diameters range from 1.7 mm down to 0.058 mm for the eutectoid steel and from 0.54 mm down to 0.02 mm for the hypereutectoid steel. The findings reveal that cold-drawing of pearlitic steel wires leads to a carbon-supersaturated ferrite causing a spontaneous tetragonal distortion of the ferrite unit cell through a strain-induced deformation driven martensitic transformation. We fi nd that the drawing process induced a significant increase in the carbon content inside the originally nearcarbon-free ferrite until a steady state is approached at drawing strains larger than ca. 4 for the wires. The change of carbon concentration in the ferrite grains during the drawing process is closely related to the tetragonal distortion of the ferrite unit cell

Beam heat load and pressure rise in a cold vacuum chamber

The beam heat load and the pressure in the vacuum chamber of the cold bore superconducting undulator installed at ANKA (ANgstrom source KArlsruhe) have been monitored for almost two years. Possible sources of the observed heat load could be synchrotron radiation from upstream magnets, image currents, electron and ion bombardment. In this paper, the various possible contributions to the heat load are discussed and compared with experimental results. The dynamic pressure increases nonlinearly with the average beam current. The current where it assumes a maximum varies both with the bunch intensity and with the initial vacuum pressure. A correlation between the heat load and the dynamic pressure has been observed. This study suggests that electron bombardment could explain the beam heat load and pressure rise observed for a bunch length of 10 mm

Gene Expression Correlates with Process Rates Quantified for Sulfate- and Fe(III)-Reducing Bacteria in U(VI)-Contaminated Sediments

Though iron- and sulfate-reducing bacteria are well known for mediating uranium(VI) reduction in contaminated subsurface environments, quantifying the in situ activity of the microbial groups responsible remains a challenge. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the use of quantitative molecular tools that target mRNA transcripts of key genes related to Fe(III) and sulfate reduction pathways in order to monitor these processes during in situ U(VI) remediation in the subsurface. Expression of the Geobacteraceae-specific citrate synthase gene (gltA) and the dissimilatory (bi)sulfite reductase gene (dsrA), were correlated with the activity of iron- or sulfate-reducing microorganisms, respectively, under stimulated bioremediation conditions in microcosms of sediments sampled from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Integrated Field Research Challenge (OR-IFRC) site at Oak Ridge, TN, USA. In addition, Geobacteraceae-specific gltA and dsrA transcript levels were determined in parallel with the predominant electron acceptors present in moderately and highly contaminated subsurface sediments from the OR-IFRC. Phylogenetic analysis of the cDNA generated from dsrA mRNA, sulfate-reducing bacteria-specific 16S rRNA, and gltA mRNA identified activity of specific microbial groups. Active sulfate reducers were members of the Desulfovibrio, Desulfobacterium, and Desulfotomaculum genera. Members of the subsurface Geobacter clade, closely related to uranium-reducing Geobacter uraniireducens and Geobacter daltonii, were the metabolically active iron-reducers in biostimulated microcosms and in situ core samples. Direct correlation of transcripts and process rates demonstrated evidence of competition between the functional guilds in subsurface sediments. We further showed that active populations of Fe(III)-reducing bacteria and sulfate-reducing bacteria are present in OR-IFRC sediments and are good potential targets for in situ bioremediation

Beam heat load and pressure rise in a could vacuum chamber

The beam heat load and the pressure in the vacuum chamber of the cold bore superconducting undulator installed at ANKA (ANgstrom source KArlsruhe) have been monitored for almost two years. Possible sources of the observed heat load could be synchrotron radiation from upstream magnets, image currents, electron and ion bombardment. In this paper, the various possible contributions to the heat load are discussed and compared with experimental results. The dynamic pressure increases nonlinearly with the average beam current. The current where it assumes a maximum varies both with the bunch intensity and with the initial vacuum pressure. A correlation between the heat load and the dynamic pressure has been observed. This study suggests that electron bombardment could explain the beam heat load and pressure rise observed for a bunch length of 10 mm

Validation of thermal-mechanical modeling of stainless steel forgings

A constitutive model for recrystallization has been developed within the framework of an existing dislocation-based rate and temperature-dependent plasticity model. The theory has been implemented and tested in a finite element code. Material parameters were fit to data from monotonic compression tests on 304L steel for a wide range of temperatures and strain rates. The model is then validated by using the same parameter set in predictive thermal-mechanical simulations of experiments in which wedge forgings were produced at elevated temperatures. Model predictions of the final yield strengths compare well to the experimental results