Modeling of environmentally assisted intergranular crack propagation in polycrystals

Polycrystalline nickel-based superalloys experience accelerated intergranular crack growth when exposed to dwell times in oxygen-rich environments and a combination of high temperature and tensile mechanical loading. Increasing crack growth rates are observed for increasing amounts of environmental oxygen in a certain oxygen concentration range, while below and above that range crack growth rates remain approximately constant. A fully coupled chemo-mechanical modeling framework accounting for the degradation of grain boundaries by oxygen has been presented by the authors. In this work, we expand the framework by a moving boundary condition to capture a realistic oxygen flux in grain boundary cracks for both edge cracks connected to the environment and interior cracks. In numerical simulation results, the behavior of the moving boundary condition is shown for intergranular crack propagation through a polycrystal subjected to cyclic loading. Finally, the capabilities of the modeling framework to qualitatively predict the dependence of the average crack growth rate on the environmental oxygen content, load level, and dwell time are evaluated and it is shown that predictions qualitatively agree with experimental observations for intergranular fracture.