Moritz Liesegang, Philipp Lion, Tilmann Beck, M. Gräf, Gabriele Steidl

• To improve component design, the fundamental understanding of the fatigue behaviour of gas turbine materials is essential. Since Ni-alloys exhibit pronounced elastic anisotropy, the local grain orientation strongly affects the stress and strain distribution in the material under mechanical loadings. This work addresses the characterisation of anisotropic elastic–plastic deformation and its consequences for crack initiation of nickel-base superalloy IN617 under tensile loading. Samples were loaded in situ in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to correlate the deformation behaviour with the grain structure and the grain orientation determined by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) measurements. To calculate the resulting stresses and strains, the EBSD data were used to develop a model by finite element method (FEM) considering the grain structure and orientation. The results of the elastic–plastic finite element (FE) simulation were compared with the theories of the E⋅m model based on the Schmidt factor (m) and anisotropic Young’s modulus (E). A mathematical image registration method called “optical flow method” (OFM), which is capable to calculate the transformation of EBSD measuring points during deformation, was applied to the EBSD data. The strains calculated by the optical flow method and by FE simulation were compared for two samples. The findings revealed large strains in the later crack initiation area found in both the OFM and FEM. The developed FEM model was verified by the successful correlation of hypotheses of the E·m model with the simulated mechanical behaviour. Furthermore, the impact of the microstructural neighbourhood on the mechanical behaviour was emphasised.