Hardness Variation of GH4169 Superalloy Treated by an Electric Field During Aging at 700

An external electric field was applied on GH4169 superalloy during aging at 700℃in order to study the hardness variation.The results indicate that the amount of vacancies in the matrix increase after electric field treatment and some monovacancies changes into the vacancy clusters.Vacancy flow forms and the segregation of Fe and Cr atoms of the alloy generates because of the non-equilibrium distribution of electric field induced by the charged surfaces.Since the severe lattice distortion will occur at the local area,the specimen is hardened.