Single-Crystal Ni-Based Alloys

Dear Colleagues,

Single-crystal alloys are the biggest technological advancement since the emergence of high-temperature superalloys in 1940s, with a number of applications in, among others, aerospace and power generation. The manufacturing process is carefully carried out to control the thermal gradient and remove the grain boundary so as to produce a single crystalline form. This leads to excellent mechanical performance (long creep and fatigue life) and resistance to chemical degradation (oxidation and corrosion), especially at high temperatures close to their melting points. However, the manufacture of single-crystal nickel-based alloys via investment casting can introduce some unexpected, undesirable grain boundaries or other metallurgical defects which break the single-crystal form and enormously degrade the mechanical performance under high-temperature and high-pressure operating conditions. To mitigate those defects, the manufacture processing conditions should be precisely controlled using both computational and experimental approaches. Consequently, understanding the compositional–metallurgical process is of great importance to prevent and ultimately eliminate the defects of single-crystal alloys. We would like to invite academics and researchers to contribute to this Special Issue on “Single-Crystal Ni-Based Alloys”, which is intended to serve as a unique multidisciplinary forum covering broad aspects of science, technology, and the application of single crystal Ni-based alloys. The potential topics include but are not limited to:

• Materials design of single-crystal Ni-based alloys;
• Processing and process modelling of single-crystal Ni-based alloys;
• Integrated computational materials engineering (ICME)/high-fidelity modelling;
• Solidification and defect control of single-crystal Ni-based alloys; 
• Materials characterisation of single-crystal Ni-based alloys using advanced techniques; 
• Physical metallurgy of single-crystal Ni-based alloys.

Prof. Dr. Hongbiao Dong
Dr. Chinnapat Panwisawas
Prof. Dr. Paul A. Withey
Topic Editors