Computer-Aided Alloy Design of Insert Metal for Transient Liquid Phase Bonding of High Aluminum Ni-base Superalloys

A computer-aided alloy-designing technique to develop the insert metal for transient liquid phase (TLP) bonding was applied to high aluminum Ni-base superalloys. The main procedure of a mathematical programming method was to obtain the optimal chemical composition through rationally compromising the plural objective performances of insert metal by a grid-search which involved data estimation from the limited experimental data using interpolation method. The objective function Z which was introduced as an index of bonding performance of insert metal involved the melting point, hardness (strength), formability of brittle phases and void ratio (bonding defects) in bond layer as the evaluating factors. The contour maps of objective function Z were also obtained applying the interpolation method. The compositions of Ni-3.0%Cr-4.0%B-0.5%Ce (for ${\gamma}$/${\gamma}$/${\beta}$ type alloy) and Ni3.5%Cr-3.5%B-3%Ti (for ${\gamma}$/${\gamma}$ type alloy) which optimized the objective function were determined as insert metal. SEM observations revealed that the microstructure in bond layers using the newly developed insert metals indicated quite sound morphologies without forming microconstituents and voids. The creep rupture properties of both joints were much improved compared to a commercial insert metal of MBF-80 (Ni-15.5%Cr-3.7%B), and were fairly comparable to those of base metals.