On the impact of the mesostructure on the creep response of cellular NiAl-Mo eutectics

Directionally solidified eutectics of NiAl matrix and fibrous refractory metals, like Mo, can form cellular mesostructures with significant fiber misalignment and changing fiber volume fraction, for example, when being solidified at high growth rates or when increased solidification intervals are present in the alloys. In order to reveal the deteriorating impact of the mesostructure, i.e., the volume fraction and aspect ratio of the well-aligned cells, on the creep response of such cellular eutectics, we rely on scale-bridging numerical simulations, using the level-set framework by Sonon et al. [1] for microstructure generation and FFT-based solvers for computing the creep response. Our results indicate, firstly, that the fraction of properly aligned regions in cellular NiAl composites is lower than estimated in earlier experimental studies, due to the existence of degenerated regions surrounding the well-aligned cell interiors. Secondly, studying the influence of the cell aspect ratio shows that the apparent stress exponent of the composite is very sensitive with respect to this parameter, providing a possible explanation for the large scatter of experimentally determined stress exponents in previous studies. A comparison of the numerical simulations to a linear rule of mixtures and the frequently applied analytical Kelly-Street model illustrates that both fail to accurately describe the magnitude of minimum creep rates in the investigated ranges of volume fractions and aspect ratios. The heterogeneity of the strain-rate field on the mesoscale is identified as the primary error source, demonstrating that either numerical simulations or more sophisticated analytical models are required for reliably predicting for the creep response of cellular materials.