Formation mechanism of large grains inside annealed microstructure of GH4169 superalloy by cellular automation method

In authors' previous work [Mater. Charact. 141 (2018) 212-222], it was found that the heterogeneous deformed microstructures can be replaced by the relatively homogeneous recrystallized grains through an annealing treatment. However, there are still some relatively large recrystallized grains. To find the reasons for the formation of large grains, some new annealing treatment tests were done, and the cellular automation (CA) simulations were carried out in the present work. The experimental results showed that the microstructural evolution during annealing treatment is significantly affected by the content of delta phase. So, the effects of delta phase on the nucleation and growth of grains are carefully considered in the CA model to accurately simulate the microstructural evolution behavior. By the CA simulation, it is found that the dislocation density rapidly decreases due to the nucleation of static recrystallization (SRX) and the growth of dynamc recrystallization (DRX) nuclei at the early stage of annealing. The high initial dislocation density can provide the high velocity for the growth of DRX nuclei, which is responsible for the formation of coarse grains. However, the growth rate of SRX nuclei is relatively small due to the low dislocation density and pinning effects of delta phase. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The editorial office of Journal of Materials Science & Technology.