Materials Science & Engineering A 662 (2016) 385394

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Materials Science & Engineering A

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/msea

Multi-scale simulation of nanoindentation on cast Inconel 718 and NbC

precipitate for mechanical properties prediction
Chenghui Ye a,1, Jieshi Chen a,c,1, Mengjia Xu a, Xiao Wei a, Hao Lu a,b,n
a

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China
Key Lab of Shanghai Laser Manufacturing and Materials Modication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China
c
School of Materials Engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai 201620, PR China
b

art ic l e i nf o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 13 October 2015
Received in revised form
16 February 2016
Accepted 17 March 2016
Available online 18 March 2016

Multi-scale simulation of nanoindentation on cast Inconel 718 superalloy and its NbC precipitate were
performed with combined rst principle study and crystal plasticity nite element method (CPFEM). The
concerned parameters were calibrated through a representative volume element (RVE) model compared
with the stressstrain curves obtained from tensile tests. Nanoindentation was carried out on the matrix.
First principle calculations were applied to estimate the mechanical properties of precipitate NbC, including elastic modulus and hardness. The simulated forcedisplacement curves match well with the
experimental results. The simulated results indicate that the local pile-up pattern in the indentation zone
depends signicantly on the crystallographic orientations. In addition, large precipitate NbC inserted in
the matrix was also indented and simulated. The elastic modulus calculated by rst principle is quite
accurate while the yield stress is determined using inversion calculations. It appears that the proposed
CPFE analysis approach combined with rst principle calculation do help estimate the mechanical behavior of large precipitates on the Ni-based superalloy.
& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Finite element method
Nanoindentation
Nickel based superalloys
Plasticity

1. Introduction
Inconel 718 is a nickel based superalloy with superior mechanical properties and structural stability at elevated temperature
resulting from precipitation hardening. The matrix is phase
(FCC). The most common precipitates in cast Inconel 718 are MC
(FCC), laves phases (HCP) and -Ni3Nb (D0a, orthorhombic), apart
from (L12, cubic) and (D022, tetragonal) strengthening phase in
the matrix.[13].
To investigate local properties of Inconel 718, nanoindentation
is a good choice that can measure mechanical properties such as
hardness and elastic modulus even at micro-nano scales. The indentation depth ranges from tens of nanometers to several microns. This testing method was rst introduced in mid-1970s [47]
and it is now widely used to characterize micro-mechanical behavior. However, it is difcult to interpret the experimental data as
it involves a very complex deformation eld. With the help of nite element method (FEM), more information can be obtained. In
addition, traditional plastic theory cannot illustrate the anisotropy
and the evolution of orientation during the deformation.
n
Corresponding author at: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, PR China.
E-mail address: shweld@sjtu.edu.cn (H. Lu).
1
Co-rst Authors.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2016.03.081
0921-5093/& 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Therefore, the crystal plasticity (CP) constitutive models based on

dislocation evolution in crystal have been developed and applied
on nanoindentation simulation.
The CP theory was rst introduced by Taylor [8,9], afterwards, it
was incorporated with FEM. CPFEM adapts well with complex
boundaries and enables various of plastic ow and hardening laws.
Liu et al. [10] carried out 3D CPFE simulations of nanoindentation
on copper single crystals, combined with experimental forcedisplacement curves to predict the stressstrain curve at the mesoscale. Li et al. [11] simulated nanoindentation on aluminum alloy
polycrystals to study the effect of orientation, grain tessellation
and grain boundaries. Li et al. [12] presented a numerical simulation of variable amplitude loading effects on cyclic plasticity and
microcrack initiation in 304 L steel. Nie et al. analyzed the size
effect of precipitates on the creep properties of nickel based superalloys using creep based CPFE model [13].
In spite of these recent studies, the application of CPFEM in
nanoindentation remains to be improved. There is seldom CPFEM
simulation of nanoindentation on nickel based superalloy, mainly
due to the fact that nickel based superalloys are lled with various
precipitates. In addition, as far as the author's knowledge, there
was no study on CPFE simulation of nanoindentation on materials
with precipitates. How to estimate mechanical properties of precipitates in nickel based superalloys remains an issue.
As a solution to this issue, rst principle study provides a

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C. Ye et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 662 (2016) 385394

Table 1
Composition of Inconel 718 high temperature alloy (wt%).
C

Cr

Ni

Mo

Al

Ti

(Nb Ta)

Fe

0.020.08

17.0021.00

50.0055.00

2.803.30

0.400.60

0.901.15

5.005.50

Rest

means of calculating mechanical behaviors of crystals based on

stress-strain approach [14]. Therefore, multi-scale simulations
provide a solution to simulate nanoindentation on materials with
precipitates. In this study, CPFE simulation of nanoindentation
combined with rst principle study is applied to estimate the
mechanical properties of NbC precipitate in Inconel 718. To ensure
accurate simulation results, CP parameters are calibrated with
representative volume element (RVE) model, and simulation results of force-displacement curve are compared with experimental
data. The sections of the paper are arranged as follows: The theory
of CP and the calibration of the CPRVE model are presented in
Section 2. The calibration of Berkovich indenter and nanoindentation experimental results are reported in Section 3.
Multi-scale simulation of Inconel 718 and NbC precipitate under
nanoindentation compared with the experimental data is discussed in Section 4. Finally, conclusions are given in the last
section.

effect of the mobile dislocation density. The critical shear stress c

is thus expressed as a function of the forest dislocation F, such
that:

c = Gb

12

= 1 A F

(5)

where A is the interaction matrix that describes the hindering

behavior between different slip systems. G is the shear modulus, b
is the burger's vector, h is the hardening strength and stands for
the shear strain.
The interaction matrix is composed of four dislocation interaction types from a0 to a3. The evolution of dislocation density can
be decomposed into a term of dislocation multiplication and a
term of annihilation for the slip system , as follows:

F =

1 F

2
y

c
b
K

(6)

where yc represents the critical annihilation length, which is related to the dynamic recovery. K is a constant.

2. Crystal plasticity theory and calibration

2.1. Crystal plasticity formulations

2.2. Calibration with RVE model

The plastic deformation of a single crystal is regarded as the
cause of crystalline slip. The deformation gradient F is the product
of a lattice deformation gradient F* and a plastic deformation
gradient Fp, assuming that the material ows depends on dislocation motion, and then the combination of elastic deformation
and rigid body rotation [15].

F = F *Fp

(1)

The velocity gradient L can be dened as:

L = FF 1 = F * F * 1 + F *Fp F p1F * 1 = L* + F *L pF * 1

(2)

The plastic velocity tensor Lp can be expressed by the sum of

the shearing rate for all 12 slip systems of a face centered cubic
(FCC) crystal structure ( = 1, 2, , 12). The slip system is spe

cied by the slip direction m and slip plane normal n in the

global coordinate as the following equation:
12

Lp =

m n

(3)

=1

The shearing rate for each slip system can be approximated

by a power law:

n
= 0 si gn( )
c

(4)

where the rate exponent n represents the strain rate sensitivity.

is the critical resolved shear stress for the slip system , which
stands for the projection of the nominal stress onto the slip plane,
and it is the driving force of the plastic deformation. The strength
c for the slip system is the resistance of the plastic deformation,
namely the stress needed for attaining reference velocity in the
slip system . Based on the hardening law [16], it is assumed that
the dislocation cutting force is the major obstacle in plastic deformation. As a result, the plastic shear rate is related to the mean

To use the CP formulations listed above, the calibration of

parameters is necessary. The composition of cast Inconel 718 used
in this study is listed in Table 1. As the sample has undergone high
temperature for a long time, the grains have grown coarser and
the mechanical properties are not as good as those in standards.
The samples are carefully polished and electrolytic etched with
10% chromic acid solution as electrolyte under a voltage of 45 V for
10 s for SEM observation. Also, EDS analysis was conducted to
identify the precipitates. As is shown in Fig.1, signicant dendritic
segregation is observed in this alloy. Precipitates are strongly
segregated and form dendrites. When the segregation spot is
zoomed to 20,000
, both large precipitates of several microns
and tiny needle-like precipitates of hundreds of nanometers are
observed. According to Wen Sun [17], large precipitates in cast
Inconel 718 alloys are mainly MC and tiny precipitates are Laves
phase or phase.
Cast Inconel 718 alloy is composed of polycrystals with a mean
grain size around 300 mm. It is time-consuming to simulate all the
grains in the tensile sample. CPRVE model is thus implemented in
micro-scale simulations to effectively represent the mechanical
behavior of the macro-scale specimen with the minimum number
of grains. [18,19] The CP parameters were calibrated using standard tension tests with a CPRVE model. The CPRVE model used in
this study is 4.4
4.4
1.1 mm3, containing 1000 equiaxed grains
with different random orientations as shown in Fig. 2. Meanwhile,
tensile tests of Inconel 718 bar samples are conducted on Zwick/
Roell Z100 with a constant strain rate of 1 mm/min. The tensile bar
samples are 6 mm in diameter and 40 mm in gage length. The
comparison between tensile test and CPRVE models is shown in
Fig. 3. After times of parameter testing, good agreements are found
with the CP parameters listed in Table 2. With these parameters,
the mechanical properties of Inconel 718 superalloy can be numerically simulated with CPFEM method.

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387

Fig.1. SEM of cast Inconel 718 at (a) 500
(b) 2000
(c) 20,000
.

Table 2
Paremeters used in CPFE model.
C11 (MPa)

C12 (MPa)

C44 (MPa)

0 (MPa)

0 (s  1)

a0

a1

203,030

149,870

134,980

32

0.001

2.703

0.045

0.625

a2

a3

0 (m  2)

b (nm)

yc (nm)

0.255

1.43

64

0.137

0.122

10

12

3. Nanoindentation test

Fig.2. RVE model of Inconel 718 polycrystals tensile test.

Before nanoindentation, the sample of Inconel 718 was mechanically polished and then vibrant polished for 2 hours. It was
not etched so that the structure of precipitates on the matrix is
totally kept. Nanoindentation test of Inconel 718 was conducted on
Hysitron TI 950 TriboIndenter which combines nanoindentation
with in-situ scanning probe microscopy (SPM). The indenter was a
Berkovich indenter made of diamond with an apex angle of
142.35 and a radius of 150 nm. To have a better comparison with
the simulation results, displacement control method was adopted
so that the indenter stopped and unloaded once the displacement
had reached the designated indentation depth. Loading is a complex process which involves plastic deformation (material nonlinearity) and an increasing contact area (geometric nonlinearity),
while unloading is purely elastic. To ensure accurate measurement, the shape of the indenter was also calibrated. According to
Oliver and Pharr [20], a practical indenter is not as perfect as an
ideal one, and its shape can be tted with the following equation:

Ac = 24.56hc2 + C1hc1 + C2hc1/2 + C3hc1/4 + + C8hc1/128

Fig.3. The comparison of Stress-Strain curve between tensile test and RVE model.

(7)

where Ac is the contact area, hc is the contact depth, C1 to C8 are

constants, the rst term 24.56hc2 represents the shape of an ideal
Berkovich indenter and the rests are terms to modify its shape due
to bluntness and defects. The actual shape of the Berkovich indenter was tted as shown in Fig. 4.
In order to clarify the hardening effect of NbC precipitate on Nibased superalloy, nanoindentation test is carried out on both
matrix and NbC precipitate. It is worth noting that, in this paper,
the matrix stands for Inconel 718 superalloy without visible precipitates, which has taken into account some tiny precipitates
(distributed underneath the surface in the segregation spot). Since
these tiny precipitates have a uniform distribution in the segregation spot [17,21], the matrix and tiny precipitates can be treated
as one. As is shown in back-scattered Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) Fig. 5, four nanoindentation tests were conducted on

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C. Ye et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 662 (2016) 385394

Fig.4. (a) Sketch of a real Berkovich indenter, 62.35 (b) The calibration relation between contact area and contact depth of the Berkovich indenter.

the matrix. The indentation was controlled by indentation depth,

so that the indenter started unloading at an indentation depth of
250 nm. As for NbC precipitate, due to its extremely high hardness,
the indentation depth was set to 200 nm, where the maximum
load of indenter had been reached at 12833 N.
As to indent on NbC precipitate, we do not want to damage the
matrix of Ni, as a result, only slight etching was allowed during
vibrant polishing. Thus only precipitates at the surface of the
sample can be observed. Also, limited by the resolution of SPM,
only large precipitates at the surface of the sample can be identied, which are typically carbides such as NbC.
Then a nanoindentation on NbC precipitate was also conducted
as shown in Fig. 6a. The indentation was totally on the precipitate
so that we can assume this structure as a NbC layer inserted to the
surface of the matrix. As we can see in Fig. 6b, the Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (EDS) analysis of the composition of this
precipitate proves that the precipitate is mainly NbC, since it is
rich in Nb and C.

4. Multi-scale simulation
Multi-scale simulation is carried out including rst principle
study and CPFEM simulation of nanoindentation. At rst, rst
principle study was conducted to predict the mechanical properties of NbC precipitate, and these properties would be used in
CPFEM simulation. Then CPFEM models were built to simulate the
process of nanoindentation of the matrix and NbC precipitate.
4.1. First principle study on mechanical properties of NbC
To estimate the mechanical properties of precipitate NbC, rst
principle study was conducted. All calculations presented in this
work were performed using the CASTEP plane-wave code [22]
based on density-functional theory (DFT), and the exchange-correlation energy was calculated using the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof
(PBE) general gradient approximation (GGA) [23]. Brillouin-zone
integrations were performed using Monkhorst and Pack k-point

Fig.5. (a) SEM image of 4 nanoindentations on the matrix (b) SPM image of the same nanoindentations.

C. Ye et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 662 (2016) 385394

389

Fig.6. (a) SEM image of nanoindentation on NbC precipitate. (b) EDS spectrum of the precipitate.
Table 3
Structural properties obtained by GGA calculations, in comparison with other experimental works. Lattice parameters a (), b (), c (); Cell volume V (3); Information in square brackets shows the nal setting values for k-point meshes and
their corresponding k-point numbers.
Phase Structure Space
group
NbC

Cub.

Method

Lattice parameters
()

GGA[6
6
6] a b c 4.478
Exp. by others a b c 4.468a

FM-3M

89.76
89.19a

569.2 (557.3 )

NbC
a

C12
a

C44
a

172.8 (162.4 )

148.5 ( 146.5a)

meshes [24]. The nal settings for these calculations are shown in
Table 3. Besides, the elastic constants were calculated by the
stress-strain approach [25]. The convergence tolerance were selected as follows: minimum energy less than 5.0
106 eV/atom,
maximum force less than 0.01 eV   1, maximum stress less than
0.02 GPa, and maximum displacement less than 5
104 . The
calculated elastic constants are listed in Table 4.
Usually, on the basis of the elastic constants, the bulk modulus
(B) and shear modulus (G) are determined by the Voigt-Reuss-Hill
(VRH) averaging scheme [27].
The Voigt bounds on the effective bulk and shear modulus of
cubic polycrystals are

GVoigt = (c11 c12 + 3c44 )/5

GV
R

BV
BR

(13)

A is identically set to zero for locally isotropy single crystals,

and the departure of AU from zero indicates the extent of elastic
anisotropy. The calculated value of AU is collected in Table 5, which
indicates that NbC has slight elastic anisotropy.
A three-dimensional (3D) curved surface, representing the
dependence of elastic properties on crystallographic directions,
can indicate the elastic anisotropy of crystal structure as shown in
Fig. 7. The directional dependence of Young's modulus (E) for cubic
crystals can be dened as [29]:

Cubic system:

Ref [14].

BVoigt = (c11 + 2c12)/3

(12)

The elastic anisotropy of the crystals can also be measured by

the universal anisotropy index (AU) [28]:

AU = 5

Table 4
Elastic constants (GPa) of NbC.
C11

9BG
3B 2G
,=
3B + G
2(3B + G)

V(3)

Ref [26].

Phase

E=

1/E = S11 2(S11 S12 S44/2)(l12l22 + l22l32 + l32l12)

where Sij are the elastic compliance constants, namely the reverse
of elastic constants, and l1, l2 are the directional cosines to the X, Y
axes, respectively.
According to Gao's theory [30], the theoretical hardness of
crystal can be expressed as follow:

Hv = A 0 Pvb5/3

(15)

where A0 is a proportional coefcient, set to 740, P is the Mulliken

overlap population, and Vb is the bond volume. The following
equation is used to calculate Vb: [31]

Vb = (d u)3/ [(d v )3Nbv ]

(16)

(8)
(9)

(14)

Calculated results are listed in Table 6. These results are close to

those calculated by YangZhen Liu. As empirical equation suggests
that the hardness is about 3 times of yield stress, the yield stress

While for the Reuss bounds, the equations are

BReuss = (c11 + 2c12)/3

G Reuss =

5(c11 c12)c44
4c44 + 3(c11 c12)

(10)

(11)

Then the Young's modulus (E) and the averaged Poisson's ratio
() can be obtained:

Table 5
Calculated elastic properties of NbC. Bulk modulus B (GPa); Shear modulus G (GPa);
Young's modulus E (GPa); Poisson's ratio ; Universal anisotropy index (AU).
Phase

Bhill

Ghill

B/G

AU

NbC

304.9

166.7

0.27

423.0 (483.9a)

1.82

0.084

Ref [14].

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4.2.2. Nanoindentation on NbC precipitate inserted in the matrix

For that the NbC precipitate is large and that the indentation
was entirely on the precipitate (see Fig. 6a), it is assumed as an
NbC layer on the top of the matrix as shown in Fig. 8c. Here the
thickness of NbC layer is large enough that the deformation is
concentrated in this region. This model with an NbC layer has the
same mesh and boundary conditions with the previous one.
However, differences lie in material properties. Here elements in
green represent for the matrix, whose properties are given by CP
laws. As NbC precipitate is extremely hard and quite brittle, here
we only consider an ideal EP property without hardening. Due to
the fact that NbC has slight anisotropy and that orientation has
little effect on force-displacement curve, simple EP properties is
enough to estimate mechanical properties of NbC. The elements in
red represent for NbC whose mechanical properties have been
calculated in the Section 4.1 with rst principle.
4.3. Simulation results and discussion

Fig.7. The directional dependence of Young's Modulus (E) for NbC.

Table 6
Calculated bond parameters Vickers hardness for NbC. The units for hardness are in
GPa.
Phase

bond

d ()

Nbv

vb (3)

Hv (Gpa)

NbC

Nb-C

2.248

12

0.75

7.48

19.38 (19.5a)

Ref [14]

used in the simulation is estimated around 6.46 GPa. And these

properties can be used as reference for mechanical properties for
NbC in FE simulations.
4.2. CPFE simulation procedure
4.2.1. Nanoindentation on the matrix
The boundary effect has great inuence on the simulation result as nanoindentation only induces local deformation underneath the indenter. To nd a balance between boundary effect and
computational efciency, a core CP model is combined with an
elasto-plastic (EP) model. As is shown in Fig. 8, the dimension of
the model is 20
20
10 mm3, and it consists of 125800 hexahedral elements (C3D8R). The elements are ner in the middle and
range from 100 nm to 760 nm. The Berkovich indenter is discrete
rigid and consist of 53778 triangular elements (R3D3) to provide
detailed shape at the tip of indenter and to reduce the mismatch of
nodes on the indenter and the sample. CPFEM is applied in ABAQUS standard solver by using a UMAT subroutine. Since the force
displacement curve is independent from the coefcient of friction
[10], the contact surface is then assumed to be frictionless in the
tangential direction and hard contact in the normal direction.
The bottom surface of the EP model is xed in the Z direction and
the lateral surfaces are xed in the X or Y direction.

4.3.1. Nanoindentation on the matrix

Four indentations with different random crystallographic orientations are obtained from CPFE numerical simulations. The
force-displacement curve obtained both from experiments and
simulations are presented in Fig. 9. In experimental results, peak
loads have a variation of 7%, which is resulted from misorientation
and random distributed tiny precipitates. As for the simulation
results, the peak loads only have a variation of 1.2%. Similar results
have been found by Ling Li et al. [11], which show that the effect of
orientation is limited in CPFE simulations. The accuracy of the
CPFE prediction is evident as the model can capture the variations
due to different crystallographic orientations and all the simulated
forcedisplacement curves fall in the range of the experimental
measurements regardless of the indentation depth.
Pile-up patterns can reect local deformation in the indentation zone. As is shown in Fig. 10, the pile-up patterns are asymmetric as the orientations are different from common specically
oriented single crystals. The simulated pile-up patterns are similar
with SPM images in Fig. 5b.
Besides, the patterns from different orientations are quite different from each other, which indicate that orientations will signicantly affect the local deformation in the indentation zone.
Therefore information on orientation can be obtained from pile-up
patterns. Pattern (d) is close to the orientation of (100). Pattern
(a) and pattern (d) are similar since their misorientation is small.
While pattern (b) and pattern (c) have similar orientation, the
difference lies in the stiffness.
4.3.2. Nanoindentation on NbC precipitate
As is observed in Fig. 11, the experimental force-displacement
curve reaches the maximum load of 12833 N when the indentation depth is around 200 nm. This fact proves that NbC is
much stronger and stiffer than the matrix. In the unloading period,
the experimental and simulation results have similar slope, which
illustrates that the elastic modulus calculated by rst principle is
comparable to the actual value. However, the yield stress derived
from hardness is not accurate enough. The load-displacement
curve with a yield stress of 6.46 GPa has a maximum load which is
14.7% larger than the experimental result. Therefore, inversion
calculations are carried out to determine the optimized yield
stress. As we can see, the force increases with the increasing yield
stress non-linearly. The yield stress of 5.06 GPa matches well with
the experimental curve. Then it can be estimated that the yield
stress is around 5.06 GPa. The yield stress is lower than expected
mainly due to crystalline defects that have not been considered in
rst principle calculations. During the growth of NbC precipitate,
point defects and dislocations will inevitably appear in the

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391

Fig.8. (a) Core CP model combined with isotropic EP model with dimension; (b) CP core model with dimension; (c) Model of NbC precipitate inserted in the matrix of Ni,
NbC in red and Ni in green.

The evolution of Von Mises Stress is illustrated in Fig. 12. During loading, stress accumulates under the indenter. As CP is not
implemented, the stress eld is quite isotropic. When the indenter
reaches the maximum depth, the stress in the matrix is still below
its yield stress. During unloading, maximum residual stress turns
up right underneath the edges of Berkovich indenter, where NbC
precipitate has undergone the largest deformation.

5. Conclusion

Fig.9. Forcedisplacement curves of Inconel 718 at indentation depth of 250 nm:

comparison of the experimental results (Exp14) and CPFE simulations with four
sets of crystallographic orientations (Sim-orient1-4).

precipitate and its hardness will be greatly reduced. Also, the

empirical law between hardness and yield stress is not the case for
every material.

In this study, 3D CPFE simulations combined with rst principle

calculations have been carried out to investigate the behavior of
cast Inconel 718 under nanoindentation and to estimate the mechanical properties of NbC precipitate. CP parameters have been
calibrated using standard tensile test through a 3D CPRVE model.
Also, the indenter has been carefully calibrated. Indentation was
carried out on both matrix and NbC precipitate with different indentation depths. The positions of indents have been observed by
back-scattered SEM and the composition of the precipitate has
been examined by EDS. Then multi-scale simulation including rst
principle study and CPFEM simulation have been performed. The
main results are as follows:
1. First principle calculations have been carried out to estimate the

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Fig.10. Comparison of the vertical displacement contour at an indentation depth of 250 nm for four sets of grain orientations. Each orientation under the indenter is
schematically shown at the corner of each contour. The displacements are in mm in the legend.

elastic modulus, Poisson's ratio and hardness of NbC precipitate.

Good results were found and in agreement with previous
studies.
2. The CPFE simulation of nanoindentation on the matrix has
proved that calibrated parameters can reect mechanical
properties of Ni with all the simulated force-displacement
curves within the range of experiments.
3. Orientation has limited effect on load-displacement curve, but it
has great inuence on pile-up patterns. The peak load only has a
variation of 1.2%.
4. The simulation of nanoindentation on NbC precipitate has been
done to estimate its mechanical properties. It turns out that
elastic properties are quite accurate and the yield stress can be
derived from inversion calculations.

Fig.11. Forcedisplacement curves of NbC precipitate inserted in the matrix at indentation depth of 200 nm: comparison of the experimental results and CPFE simulations with four sets of yield stress.

Consequently, the proposed CPFE simulation combined with

rst principle study shows a great potential to study polycrystalline materials and to estimate the mechanical properties of precipitates. Material behavior such as stress, strain and pile-up patterns which cannot be easily observed in experiments can be vividly obtained from simulations. Moreover, mechanical properties
like Young's Modulus and yield stress of precipitates which cannot

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393

Fig.12. Evolution of Mises stress during nanoindentation on NbC precipitate at the displacement of (a) 100 nm loading, (b) 200 nm loading, (c) 190 nm unloading and
(d) unloaded state. The unit of stress is in MPa.

be easily measured in experiments can be estimated with inversion methods.

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51575347, 51405297 and
51204107).

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