Stress relaxation behaviour in IN718 nickel based superalloy during ageing heat treatments

In this study, a series of experiments were conducted on round tensile specimens made from IN718 bar to investigate tensile stress relaxation behaviours at elevated temperatures used for aging heat treatments. The stress relaxation curves obtained can be described by a hyperbolic function with a non-zero asymptotic stress (σ∞), which seems to be proportional to the initially applied stress (σ0) for a fixed temperature. This behaviour is investigated at temperatures between 620 °C and 770 °C that is a temperature range used in industry to perform the aging heat treatments to obtain microstructures with tailored mechanical properties. It has been shown that the σ∞/ σ0 ratio has decreased rapidly with increasing temperature at this range. The relaxation behaviour has been assessed numerically and an empirical relationship has been defined for each temperature that can be used for modelling purposes.