In the past few years, it has been discussed with increasing frequency, whether cube slip does occur in gamma' hardened nickel-base superalloys. Occurrence of cube slip has consequences for the modeling of orientation dependence of the CRSS. Until now, there are only few experimental investigations.
In principle, cube slip should be possible in primitive cubic lattices (e.g. L12 ordered gamma' phase) but not in face centered cubic ones (e.g. Ni solid solution). The most favourable specimen orientations are near [111], where the Schmid factors for this type of glide exceed those for octahedral systems.
There are two basic methods to detect cube slip: macroscopic slip trace analysis and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigation of the dislocation structure. Few observations of cube slip by macroscopic slip traces are reported in the literature. But it is still uncertain under which test conditions cube slip occurs and what the dislocation mechanisms are. Cube slip was observed during tensile or compression tests of several first generation superalloys, but it seems not to occur during shear creep deformation (e.g. CMSX-4 at 980°C), and it is also lacking under conventional tensile or compression loading, if the gmma' particles are small. No observations were ever reported of dislocations gliding on {001} planes in matrix channels.
Turbine components from conventionally cast nickel-base alloy René 80 show different hot cracking susceptibilities depending on their heat treatment conditions leading to slightly different microstructures. Electron probe micro-analysis, focused ion beam technique and analytical transmission electron microscopy were applied to reveal and identify grain boundary precipitates and the γγ'-microstructure. The distribution of borides along grain boundaries was evaluated statistically by quantitative metallography. The following features could be correlated with an increase of cracking susceptibility: i) Increasing grain size, ii) increasing fraction of grain boundaries with densely spaced borides, iii) lack of secondary γ'-particles in matrix channels between the coarse cuboidal γ'-precipitates. The latter feature seems to be responsible for linking-up of cracked grain boundary precipitates which occurred as an additional cracking mechanism after one heat treatment, whereas decohesion at the boride-matrix-interface in the heat affected zone of laser-drilled holes was observed for both heat treatments.