Acceleration of Material Acceptance and Industry Adoption of an Additively Manufactured Nickel-base Superalloy

The power industry has been faced with continued challenges around decarbonization and additive manufacturing (AM) has recently seen increased use over the last decade. The use of AM has led to significant design changes in components to improve the overall efficiency of gas turbines and more recently hot-section components have been fabricated using AM nickel-base superalloys, which have shown substantial benefits. This paper will discuss and summarize extensive studies led by EPRI in a novel AM nickel-base superalloy (ABD®900-AM). A comprehensive high temperature creep testing study including >67,000 hours of creep data concluded that ABD900-AM shows improved properties compared to similar ~35% volume fraction gamma prime strengthened nickel-base superalloys fabricated using additive methods. Several different creep mechanisms were identified and various factors influencing high temperature behavior, such as grain size, orientation, processing method, heat treatment, carbide structure, chemistry and porosity were explored. Additional studies on the printability, recyclability of powder, wide range of process parameters and several other factors have also been studied and results are summarized. A summary on the alloy-by-design approach and accelerated material acceptance of ABD900-AM through extensive testing and characterization is further discussed. Numerous field studies and examples of field use cases in ABD900-AM are also evaluated to showcase industry adoption of ABD900-AM.