Microstructural influences on bending resonance fatigue in nickel-based superalloy Rene’88DT

This work aspires to reduce the hiatus between experimental results of fatigue damage in high-pressure turbine disks and the computational simulation and design process by identifying microstructural influences on fatigue crack initiation. This master’s thesis delves into the meso- and microscale fatigue phenomena of nickel-based superalloy Rene’88 Damage Tolerant by utilization of bending resonance fatigue testing of flat mesoscale specimens, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and data analysis. Moreover, using ex-situ high-resolution digital image correlation (HRDIC) allows to measure the sub-grain strain that developed near fatigue crack initiation sites.