Material and Mechanical Characterization of the Additively Manufactured High Entropy Alloy GRX-810

High entropy alloys (HEA) and additive manufacturing (AM) are growing fields of research in materials science with the potential to revolutionize the aerospace industry by providing excellent mechanical properties in extreme environments and novel geometries with tighter tolerances, respectively. GRX-810 is a newly developed additively manufactured high entropy alloy, that was invented in 2022 at the NASA Glenn Research Center. As Built GRX-810 boasts tensile strengths at 1093 nearly double that of IN625 and IN718 in the wrought condition. This is due to the presence of dispersoids acting as a strengthening mechanism at elevated temperatures. In addition, the creep performance of the HIP (Hot Isostatic Pressing) GRX-810 was over x1000 that of IN625 and IN718 at 1093 with 20MPa of applied stress. With these properties, GRX-810 can potentially provide jet engine turbine blades with better mechanical properties at wider temperature ranges. Presently, no data comparing the influence of microstructural features on the fatigue and tensile performance for GRX-810 in the As-Built or HIP conditions exists. In this study, mechanical test results of As-Built GRX-810 and HIP GRX-810 are compared with the literature data for conventional nickel superalloys used in jet engine turbines. The mechanical and materials characterization methods include tensile testing, fatigue testing, fractography and microstructural analysis.