Wide Gap Braze Repair Using Vertically Laminated Repair Scheme

Repair of after-service gas turbine hot section superalloy components provides considerable saving in life-cycle cost of engines. Whereas a number of methods have been used in the past to repair these superalloy components, wide gap brazing technology has provided a practical alternative to repair difficult-to-weld alloys with substantial damages. In this paper, the historical development of wide gap repair technologies is reviewed first. Subsequently, the recent development in utilizing a vertically laminated structure to repair a large and deep gap (up to 16 mm) in one brazing cycle will be discussed. The microstructure resulted from this repair scheme will be evaluated and compared with conventional wide gap braze with slurry and that of the Liburdi powder metallurgy (LPM™) process. It is observed that in conventional wide gap brazing with premixed slurry, the presence of intermetallic compounds can be effectively reduced by reducing the ratio of braze alloy to gap filler, which, however, also contributes to the increased occurrence of macroscopic voids in the wide gap joint. The LPM™ method, on the other hand, can achieve a macroscopically void-free repair of gap (up to 6 mm) and minimize the formation of intermetallics. By using a vertically laminated repair scheme it is shown that the process is able to repair a deeper gap (up to 16 mm) with no macroscopic defects and reduced intermetallic compounds.