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Heat accumulation during laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) of metallic build parts can adversely affect their microstructure and mechanical properties. To study the heat accumulation during 316L steel based parts manufactured by LPBF, a finite element method (FEM) based numerical study is carried out. For the investigation, a computationally efficient FEM based model, where the whole layer is simultaneously exposed to a heat source, is used. The simulation results are compared with experimental results to validate the numerical model. While considering different influencing factors such as volumetric energy density (VED) and inter-layer time (ILT), the FEM model is shown to successfully simulate the process of heat accumulation during LPBF based manufacturing of a cuboidal shaped geometry. It is shown that ILT and VED have a significant effect on heat accumulation. The validated numerical model provides a good basis for the optimization of processing parameters and geometries for a future investigation of a reduction of heat accumulation effects. Furthermore, it can be used to quickly provide preheating boundary conditions for detailed investigations by different model approaches at a finer scale for future studies.
In order to find a resource efficient approach for the fatigue lifetime prediction of laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) processed AlSi10Mg material, results of tensile and fatigue tests were compared. The specimens were manufactured with three different L-PBF machines and studied in different heat treatment conditions (as-built, annealed, T6 heat treated). The investigations showed that the high attainable tensile strength properties after the manufacturing process are not beneficial in the high cycle fatigue (HCF) regime. In contrast, the applied heat treatments, which lead typically to a decrease of ultimate tensile strength, improved dramatically the fatigue behavior. Additionally, a clear correlation between the elongation at fracture and HCF resistance has been found for individual heat treatment conditions. This empiric relationship provides an estimation of the fatigue resistance in the presence of material defects and can be implemented in part and process approvals.
Mechanical properties such as ultimate tensile strength, yield strength, and tensile elongation of parts manufactured with Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) can differ significantly after the building process limiting the advantage of production flexibility of that technology. At this background, the present work investigated the influence of post process heat treatments (HT) on microstructure, hardness, and tensile properties of AlSi10Mg specimens in different As-built (AB) conditions. For this purpose, two superordinate aspects were covered within this study. Firstly, various HTs were performed on specimens built-up with the same L-PBF machine applying the same parameter set-up. Results of tensile tests and hardness measurements were discussed considering the microstructural changes examined with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy as well as X-ray diffraction, and gathered in a material data map. Based on the observed microstructural changes and a calculated quality index which comprises strength and ductility properties, three HTs were selected for the second part of this work. Therein, the effect of these HTs on specimens fabricated with overall three L-PBF machines working with different raw materials, process parameters, and build-up strategies was studied. Specimens characterization included porosity measurements, the evaluation of material defects, microstructure analysis via SEM, hardness measurements, and tensile tests. It was found that strength properties in the AB condition revealed appreciable deviations: Values of yield strength and ultimate tensile strength were from 228 to 292 MPa and from 346 to 484 MPa, respectively. Whereas heat treated specimens at 300 °C for 0.5 as well as 2 h only exhibited slight differences in strength, a complete homogenization of strength properties was obtained after conducting a T6 HT. Nevertheless, ductility was not homogenized after heat treating caused by the presence of material defects such as keyhole pores and lack of fusion defects. It was shown that even slight differences in porosity determined in cross-sections can significantly affect ductility properties.
AlSi10Mg is one of the most applied alloys for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) technology, due to its great possibilities for implementing new lightweight concepts such as in automotive industries. For the component design it is necessary to know about the mechanical properties and the mechanical behaviour. The many published strength properties of LPBF processed AlSi10Mg show significant differences up to approximately 225 MPa in ultimate tensile strength (UTS) and 195 MPa in yield strength (YS). To understand these varying properties, a ring trial was carried out manufacturing specimens on 6 LPBF machines with different parameters and build-up strategies. They were studied in the as-built (AB) condition and after heat treatment at 300 °C for 30 min, respectively. For examining the mechanical properties, tensile tests and hardness measurements were carried out. The microstructure was characterized by optical light microscopy (OM), field emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). The identified differences in strength properties were discussed based on the 4 strengthening mechanism known for metallic materials and at the background of material defects. It was found that the size of the typical sub-cell structure of LPBF AlSi10Mg affected substantially the mechanical properties in the AB condition, in which with decreasing sub-cell size strength increased. If heat treatment was applied, the strength properties decreased and did not differ anymore. Since annealing led to coarsened sub-cells, whereas the grains itself did not change in size, the influence of sub-cell structure on strength was further confirmed. In addition, acicular precipitates in the AB condition were observed at specimens from one LPBF machine showing the lowest tensile elongation.
State-of-the-art laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/M) machines allow pre-heating of the substrate plate to reduce stress and improve part quality. However, two major issues have been shown in the past: First, with increasing build height the apparent pre-heat temperature at the surface can deviate drastically from the nominal pre-heat temperature in the substrate plate. Second, even within a single layer the local surface pre-heat temperature can show large gradients due to thermal bottlenecks in the part geometry underneath the top surface. Both lead to unwanted changes in microstructure or defects in the final parts. In this study, a first attempt is taken to show the feasibility of pre-heating the top surface with the onboard laser beam to overcome the mentioned issues. A single layer of a group of three parts built from IN718 to a height of 33.5 mm is pre-heated in a commercially available PBF-LB/M machine to an average steady state surface temperature of 200 °C using the onboard laser beam. The parts are continuously heated, omitting powder deposition and melting step. Temperatures are measured by thermocouples underneath the surface. The experiments are supported by a thermal finite element (FE) model that predicts the temperature field in the parts. When heating the parts uniformly with the laser beam, differences in surface temperatures as large as 170 K are observed. To overcome this inhomogeneity, the heat flux supplied by the laser beam is modulated. An optimized, spatial heat flow distribution is provided by the thermal FE model and translated into a scan pattern that reproduces the optimized heat distribution on the PBF-LB/M machine by locally modulating hatch distance and scan velocity. This successfully reduces the differences in surface temperature to 20 K. Thermographic imaging shows that a homogeneous surface temperature can be achieved despite the localized heat input by the beam. The potential for industrial application of the optimized laser-heating technique is discussed.
Additive manufacturing (AM) in general and laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/M) in particular are becoming increasingly important in the field of production technologies. Especially the high achievable accuracies and the great freedom in design make PBF-LB/M interesting for the manufacturing and repair of gas turbine blades. Part repair involves building AM-geometries onto an existing component. To minimise the offset between component and AM-geometry, a precise knowledge of the position of the component in the PBF-LB/M machine is mandatory. However, components cannot be inserted into the PBF-LB/M machine with repeatable accuracy, so the actual position will differ for each part. For an offset-free build-up, the actual position of the component in the PBF-LB/M machine has to be determined. In this paper, a camera-based position detection system is developed considering PBF-LB/M constraints and system requirements. This includes finding an optimal camera position considering the spatial limitations of the PBF-LB/M machine and analysing the resulting process coordinate systems. In addition, a workflow is developed to align different coordinate systems and simultaneously correct the perspective distortion in the acquired camera images. Thus, position characteristics can be determined from images by image moments. For this purpose, different image segmentation algorithms are compared. The precision of the system developed is evaluated in tests with 2D objects. A precision of up to 30μm in translational direction and an angular precision of 0.021∘ is achieved. Finally, a 3D demonstrator was built using this proposed hybrid strategy. The offset between base component and AM-geometry is determined by 3D scanning and is 69μm.
This study investigates the room‐ and high‐temperature (650 °C) tensile and low‐cycle‐fatigue behavior of Inconel 718 produced by laser powder bed fusion (PBF‐LB/M) with a four‐step heat treatment and compares the results to the conventional wrought material. The microstructure after heat treatment is characterized on different length scales. Compared to the wrought variant, the elastic and yield properties are comparable at both test temperatures while tensile strength, ductility, and strain hardening capacity are lower. The fatigue life of the PBF‐LB/M variant at room temperature is slightly lower than that of the wrought material, while at 650 °C, it is vice versa. The cyclic stress response for both material variants is characterized by cyclic softening, which is more pronounced at the higher test temperature. High strain amplitudes (≥0.7%) at room temperature and especially a high testing temperature result in the formation of multiple secondary cracks at the transitions of regions comprising predominantly elongated grain morphology and columns of stacked grains with ripple patterns in the PBF‐LB/M material. This observation and pronounced crack branching and deflection indicate that the cracks are controlled by sharp micromechanical gradients and local crystallite clusters.
AbstractPowder Bed Fusion with Laser Beam of Metals (PBF-LB/M) has gained more industrial relevance and already demonstrated applications at a small series scale. However, its widespread adoption in various use cases faces challenges due to the absence of interfaces to established Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) that support customers in the predominantly data-driven quality assurance. Current state-of-the-art PBF-LB/M machines utilize communication architectures, such as OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA), Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API). In the context of the Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI 4.0) and the Internet of Things (IoT), the assets, particularly the physical PBF-LB/M machines, already have an integration layer implemented to communicate data such as process states or sensor values. Missing is an MES component acting as a communication and information layer. To address this gap, the proposed Extract Transform Load (ETL) pipeline aims to extract relevant data from the fabrication of each build cycle down to the level of scan vectors and additionally to register process signals. The suggested data schema for archiving each build cycle adheres to all terms defined by ISO/TC 261—Additive Manufacturing (AM). In relation to the measurement frequency, all data are reorganized into entities, such as the AM machine, build cycle, part, layer, and scan vector. These scan vectors are stored in a runtime-independent format, including all metadata, to be valid and traceable. The resulting machine log represents a comprehensive documentation of each build cycle, enabling data-driven quality assurance at process level.
Undetected and undesired microstructural variations in components produced by laser powder bed fusion are a major challenge, especially for safety-critical components. In this study, an in-depth analysis of the microstructural features of 316L specimens produced by laser powder bed fusion at different levels of volumetric energy density and different levels of inter layer time is reported. The study has been conducted on specimens with an application relevant build height
(>100 mm). Furthermore, the evolution of the intrinsic preheating temperature during the build-up of specimens was monitored using a thermographic in-situ monitoring set-up. By applying recently determined emissivity values of 316L powder layers, real temperatures could be quantified. Heat accumulation led to preheating temperatures of up to about 600 °C. Significant differences in the preheating temperatures were discussed with respect to the individual process parameter combinations, including the build height. A strong effect of the inter layer time on the heat accumulation was observed. A shorter inter layer time resulted in an increase of the preheating temperature by more than a factor of 2 in the upper part of the specimens compared to longer inter layer times. This, in turn, resulted in heterogeneity of the microstructure and differences in material properties within individual specimens. The resulting differences in the microstructure were analyzed using electron back scatter diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. Results from chemical analysis as well as electron back scatter diffraction measurements indicated stable conditions in terms of chemical alloy composition and austenite phase content for the used set of parameter combinations. However, an increase of the average grain size by more than a factor of 2.5 could be revealed within individual specimens. Additionally, differences in feature size of the solidification cellular substructure were examined and a trend of increasing cell sizes was observed. This trend was attributed to differences in solidification rate and thermal gradients induced by differences in scanning velocity and preheating temperature. A change of the thermal history due to intrinsic preheating could be identified as the main cause of this heterogeneity. It was induced by critical combinations of the energy input and differences in heat transfer conditions by variations of the inter layer time. The microstructural variations were directly correlated to differences in hardness.