Coarsening kinetics during solidification of Ni-Al-Ta dendritic monocrystals

Several dendritic monocrystals of nickel-rich Ni-Al-Ta alloys were directionally solidified at about 0.25 m/h⁻¹ under a gradient of 8 × 10⁻³ K/m⁻¹. The solid-liquid interface was fossilized at a given moment by rapidly quenching the remaining liquid. In some specimens crystal pulling was interrupted for various lengths of time prior to quenching. The quenched solid-liquid interfaces were used for a convenient and rapid evaluation of: 1) isothermal coarsening kinetics of the dendritic solid at a temperature between the liquidus and the eutectic temperatures and; 2) dendrite coarsening kinetics during solidification. It was found that extension to the ternary Ni-Al-Ta system of a model previously developed for binary systems predicted isothermal dendrite coarsening kinetics in close agreement with experimental results. Agreement for coarsening kinetics during solidification was less good. An increase in tantalum or aluminum contents slowed down coarsening, yielding finer microstructures. At equal atomic percental increase in concentration, the effect of tantalum was more significant than that of aluminum.