The Effect of Temperature and Phase Shift on the Thermomechanical Fatigue of Nickel-Based Superalloy
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The present paper reports a study on the effects of temperature range and phase shift on the thermomechanical fatigue behavior of a nickel-based superalloy. A series of thermomechanical fatigue tests were carried out, followed by some microscopy observations. According to the results, the authors gave some conclusions and tried to reveal the damage mechanisms.
Over all speaking, the topic of the research is very interesting, and the conclusions provide some insight into the study of thermomechanical fatigue. The manuscript is well organized and the written is satisfactory. Therefore, the reviewer can recommend it for publication in Metals. However, the following comments should be considered before:
1. It is better to give a diagrammatic drawing to explain the two loading conditions, i.e., in-phase and out-of-phase loading.
2. Some comments should be provided on the effect of loading rate on the experiment results, since the loading rate is really different for the two temperature ranges.
3. Is it possible to provide the stress-strain curves under the different temperatures for static tensile tests. The basic mechanical properties, such as the yield stress, may be needed.
4. The fatigue hardening seems only play a role for the maximal stress. Can the authors explain this phenomenon?
5. Is it possible to provide the comparison of the fracture scanning? It may be interesting to reveal the damage mechanism.
6. It is not very convincible to draw the conclusions according the limited fatigue date shown in Fig. 6. How do you plot the solid curves (using least-squares method)? Can you give a zoom for the experiment data and show more clearly the difference among them?
7. It is better to indicate each part of the experimental setup in Fig. 3.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your helpful comments and suggestions regarding our manuscript. We carefully addressed each of your raised issues. Please find our detailed answers in the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors.
Your scientific work is interesting. The presented research results, discussion, and conclusions are at a very good scientific level. Figures reflect and support the content of the presented results of the research and are legible and understandable.
The paper could be published but after some improvement.
Several comments are as follows.
- Please show and compare what is new in your work in comparison with previous similar papers.
- In your work, the EBSD analysis was used. These results were presented only in Figure 7c. Please, do you make a more detailed description of the obtained results in Figure 7c? Which type of EBSD map is presented in Figure 7c (is it IPF map ?).
- Please, do you show also LocalMissorientation maps which allow to you present the local mechanical stresses near the crack?
- •How do you think, how the grain boundary crack propagation depends on the crystallographic orientation of grains?
Best regards.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your helpful comments and suggestions regarding our manuscript. We carefully addressed each of your raised issues. Please find our detailed answers below the respective points (see attached file).
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
