Effect of heating temperature on microstructure of directionally solidified ni-43Ti-7Al alloy

By liquid metal cooling (LMC) process, the Ni-43Ti-7Al (at.%) alloy has been directionally solidified (DS) at different heating temperatures (1450°C, 1550°C, 1650°C) and a constant withdrawal rate of 100pm/s. The results showed that anomalous eutectic structures which consisted of Ti₂Ni and TiNi phases were formed at the grain boundaries of as-cast sample and similar structures were also observed in the intercellular regions of DS samples. However, the microstructure changed from the equiaxial structure to the cellular structure due to the axial thermal gradients imposed. After DS, the NiTi and Ti₂Ni phases preferentially grew along certain orientation, but the preferred crystallographic orientations of them changed as the heating temperature increased to 1650°C, which might be related to the change of melt structure. As expected, the volume fraction of Ti₂Ni increased from 3.3% to 5.2% and the cellular spacing decreased from 47.8μm to 27.0μm as heating temperature increased. In addition, the stability of solid/liquid interface decreased, resulting from the coupling effects of G and ΔT^- with the heating temperature increasing.