Nickel-based single crystal superalloy blades have excellent high-temperature performance as the hot end part of the aero-engine turbine. The most important strengthening phase in the single crystal blade is the γ’ phase, and its morphology and size distribution directly affect the high temperature performance of the single crystal blade. In this work, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to obtain the microscopic images of the γ’ phase in multiple large continuous fields of view in the transverse sections of single crystal blades, and the quantitative statistical characterization of the γ’ phase was performed by image segmentation method based on deep learning. The 20 μm × 20 μm region was selected from the primary dendrite arm, the secondary dendrite arm, and the interdendrite to statistically analyze the γ’ phases. The statistical results show that the average size of the γ’ phase at the position of the interdendrite is significantly larger than the average size of the γ’ phase at the position of the dendrite; the sizes of the γ’ phase at the primary dendrite arm, the secondary dendrite arm and the interdendrite all obey the normal distribution; about 3.17 × 107 γ’ phases are counted in 20 positions in the 5 transverse sections of the single crystal blade in a total area of 5 mm2, and the size, geometric morphology and area fraction of all γ’ phases are respectively counted. In this work, the quantitative parameters of the γ’ phases at 4 different positions of the section of the single crystal superalloy DD5 blade were compared, the size and area fraction of the γ’ phases at the leading edge and the trailing edge were smaller, and the shape of the γ’ phase of the leading edge and the trailing edge is closer to the cube.
The Development and Characterization of a High Performance Experimental Single Crystal Superalloy