Growth kinetics of γ′ precipitates in superalloy IN-738LC during long term aging

In this research, results obtained on the growth kinetics of γ′ precipitates in superalloy IN-738LC are presented. It was found that when the coarsening of primary and secondary γ′ are considered together, the overall kinetic of coarsening followed a linear trend, as predicted by Lifshitz, Slyozov and Wagner (LSW) theory. However, when only the population of secondary γ′ was taken into account, growth rate for the secondary γ′ departed from the linear trend predicted by the theory. It is therefore suggested that the observed deviation of coarsening kinetics from linear behavior may be related to the short inter-particle distances in this system which caused elastic interaction energy to become dominant in the late stage and coarsening kinetics slow down.