scholarly journals Investigation of Porosity and Mechanical Properties of Graphene Nanoplatelets-Reinforced AlSi10 Mg by Selective Laser Melting

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yachao Wang ◽  
Jing Shi ◽  
Shiqiang Lu ◽  
Weihan Xiao

Graphene possesses many outstanding properties, such as high strength and light weight, making it an ideal reinforcement for metal matrix composite (MMCs). Meanwhile, fabricating MMCs through laser-assisted additive manufacturing (LAAM) has attracted much attention in recent years due to the advantages of low waste, high precision, short production lead time, and high flexibility. In this study, graphene-reinforced aluminum alloy AlSi10 Mg is fabricated using selective laser melting (SLM), a typical LAAM technique. Composite powders are prepared using high-energy ball milling. Room temperature tensile tests are conducted to evaluate the mechanical properties. Scanning electron microscopy observations are conducted to investigate the microstructure and fracture surface of obtain composite. It is found that adding graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) significantly increases porosity, which offsets the enhancement of tensile performance as a result of GNPs addition. Decoupling effort is then made to separate the potential beneficial effects from GNPs addition and the detrimental effect from porosity increase. For this purpose, the quantitative relationship between porosity and material strength is obtained. Taking into consideration the strength reduction caused by the increased porosity, the strengthening effect of GNPs turns out to be significant, which reaches 60.2 MPa.

Author(s):  
Yachao Wang ◽  
Jing Shi ◽  
Shiqiang Lu ◽  
Weihan Xiao

Graphene possesses many outstanding properties, such as high strengths, light weight, making it an ideal reinforcement for metal matrix composite (MMCs). Meanwhile, fabricating MMCs through laser assisted additive manufacturing (LAAM) has attracted much attention in recent years due to the advantages of low waste, high precision, short production lead time, and high flexibility. In this study, graphene reinforced aluminum alloy AlSi10Mg is fabricated using selective laser melting. Composite powder is prepared using high-energy ball milling. Room temperature tensile tests are conducted to evaluate the tensile properties. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations are conducted to investigate the microstructure and fracture surface of obtain composite. It is found that adding GNPs significantly increases porosity and therefore deteriorates material tensile performance. The relationship between porosity and material strength are numerically investigated. Taking into consideration the strength reduction caused by large porosity, the strengthening effect of GNPs turns out to be significant, which reaches 60.2 MPa.


Author(s):  
Yachao Wang ◽  
Jing Shi ◽  
Xiaoyang Deng ◽  
Shiqiang Lu

Graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) have many outstanding properties, such as high mechanical strengths, light weight, and high electric conductivity. These unique properties make it an ideal filler material for various composites. On the other hand, the development MMNCs (metal matrix nanocomposites) through additive manufacturing (AM) processes has become a major innovation in the field of advanced structural materials, owing to shorter production lead time, less material waste, high production flexibility. It is of great innovativeness to have the attractive features combined to produce GNPs reinforced MMNCs using AM techniques. In addition, metal components produced by laser assisted additive manufacturing (LAAM) methods usually have inferior mechanical properties, as compared to the counterparts by the traditional metal forming processes. To achieve optimized mechanical properties, the obtained MMNCs are subjected to various post treatment routines and the effect of post heat treatment on material properties is investigated. In this study, pure Inconel 718 and GNPs reinforced IN718 with 1.1 vol.% and 4.4 vol.% filler material are fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM). Room temperature tensile tests are conducted to evaluate the tensile properties. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations are conducted to analyze the microstructure of materials and to understand the reinforcing mechanism. It is found that fabrication of GNPs reinforced MMC using SLM is a viable approach. The obtained composites possess dense microstructure and enhanced tensile strength. The strengthening effect and mechanisms involved in the composites are discussed. Solution treatments at three levels of temperature (940, 980, and 1020°C) for 1 hour period are carried out to evaluate the effect of the heat treatment on the material microstructure and therefore the resulted mechanical properties of the composite material. The results of samples with and without heat treatment are also compared. The experiments results indicate that that addition of GNPs into Inconel 718 results in significant strength improvement. Moreover, at any volume content of reinforcement, higher solution treatment leads to lower strength, mainly due to coarsened microstructure. The addition of GNPs effectively inhibits the grain growth during the post heat process and the average grain size is significantly refined compared to unreinforced samples. Moreover, through the investigation of various strengthening mechanisms, it is found that Orowan strengthening effect is small and can be neglected for both as-built and heat treated conditions. Load transfer effect is the dominating strengthening effect among all contributors and solution treatment significantly reduces thermal mismatch strengthening.


2018 ◽  
Vol 284 ◽  
pp. 615-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.M. Baitimerov ◽  
P.A. Lykov ◽  
L.V. Radionova

TiAl6V4 titanium base alloy is widely used in aerospace and medical industries. Specimens for tensile tests from TiAl6V4 with porosity less than 0.5% was fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM). Specimens were treated using two heat treatment procedures, third batch of specimens was tested in as-fabricated statement after machining. Tensile tests were carried out at room temperature. Microstructure and mechanical properties of SLM fabricated TiAl6V4 after different heat treatments were investigated.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Helene Puichaud ◽  
Camille Flament ◽  
Aziz Chniouel ◽  
Fernando Lomello ◽  
Elodie Rouesne ◽  
...  

Additive manufacturing (AM) is rapidly expanding in many industrial applications because of the versatile possibilities of fast and complex fabrication of added value products. This manufacturing process would significantly reduce manufacturing time and development cost for nuclear components. However, the process leads to materials with complex microstructures, and their structural stability for nuclear application is still uncertain. This study focuses on 316L stainless steel fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM) in the context of nuclear application, and compares with a cold-rolled solution annealed 316L sample. The effect of heat treatment (HT) and hot isostatic pressing (HIP) on the microstructure and mechanical properties is discussed. It was found that after HT, the material microstructure remains mostly unchanged, while the HIP treatment removes the materials porosity, and partially re-crystallises the microstructure. Finally, the tensile tests showed excellent results, satisfying RCC-MR code requirements for all AM materials.


MRS Advances ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (44-45) ◽  
pp. 2431-2439
Author(s):  
N. Iqbal ◽  
E. Jimenez-Melero ◽  
U. Ankalkhope ◽  
J. Lawrence

ABSTRACTThe microstructure homogeneity and variability in mechanical properties of 316L stainless steel components fabricated using selective laser melting (SLM) have been investigated. The crack free, 99.9% dense samples were made starting from SS316L alloy powder, and the melt pool morphology was analysed using optical and scanning electron microscopy. Extremely fast cooling rates after laser melting/solidification process, accompanied by slow diffusion of alloying elements, produced characteristic microstructures with colonies of cellular substructure inside grains, grown along the direction of the principal thermal gradient during laser scanning. In some areas of the microstructure, a significant number of precipitates were observed inside grains and at grain boundaries. Micro hardness measurements along the build direction revealed slight but gradual increase in hardness along the sample height. Uniaxial tensile tests of as manufactured samples showed the effect of un-melted areas causing scatter in room-temperature mechanical properties of samples extracted from the same SLM build. The ultimate tensile strength (UTS) varied from 458MPa to 509MPa along with a variation in uniform elongation from 3.3% to 14.4%. The UTS of a sample exposed to the Cl- rich corrosion environment at 46oC temperature revealed a similar strength as of the original sample, indicating good corrosion resistance of SLM samples under those corrosion conditions.


Metals ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Chen ◽  
Guangfu Yin ◽  
Zai Feng ◽  
Xiaoming Liao

Additive manufacturing by selective laser melting (SLM) was used to investigate the effect of powder feedstock on 316L stainless steel properties include microstructure, relative density, microhardness and mechanical properties. Gas atomized SS316L powders of three different particle size distribution were used in this study. Microstructural investigations were done by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Tensile tests were performed at room temperatures. Microstructure characterization revealed the presence of hierarchical structures consisting of solidified melt pools, columnar grains and multiform shaped sub-grains. The results showed that the SLM sample from the fine powder obtained the highest mechanical properties with ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of 611.9 ± 9.4 MPa and yield strength (YS) of 519.1 ± 5.9 MPa, and an attendant elongation (EL) of 14.6 ± 1.9%, and a maximum of 97.92 ± 0.13% and a high microhardness 291 ± 6 HV0.1. It has been verified that the fine powder (~16 μm) could be used in additive manufacturing with proper printing parameters.


2014 ◽  
Vol 627 ◽  
pp. 305-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Brynk ◽  
Barbara Romelczyk ◽  
Zbigniew Pakiela ◽  
Tomasz Kurzynowski ◽  
Edward Chlebus

Mini-samples technique was utilized to determine mechanical properties of technically pure titanium produced by means of selective laser melting (SLM). Full-field digital image correlation (DIC) measurements and inverse method were applied for crack tip position and stress intensity factors calculations in the case of fatigue crack growth rate tests. DIC was also used for strain measurement during tensile tests on sub sized samples. There was studied the influence of samples orientation on the mechanical properties of mini-samples. Samples were cut out from rectangular cubes and were oriented with 0°, 45° or 90° angle to the direction of laser beam travel. There were also tested samples directly produced via SLM. Additionally microstructure observations were performed to verify the quality of SLM processed materials and explain mechanical properties variations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 112 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 175-192
Author(s):  
Mulla Ahmet Pekok ◽  
Rossitza Setchi ◽  
Michael Ryan ◽  
Quanquan Han ◽  
Dongdong Gu

AbstractSelective laser melting (SLM) offers significant benefits, including geometric freedom and rapid production, when compared with traditional manufacturing techniques. However, the materials available for SLM production remain limited, restricting the industrial adoption of the technology. The mechanical properties and microstructure of many aluminium alloys have not been fully explored, as their manufacturability using SLM is extremely challenging. This study investigates the effect of laser power, hatch spacing and scanning speed on the mechanical and microstructural properties of as-fabricated aluminium 2024 alloy (AA2024) manufactured using SLM. The results reveal that almost crack-free structures with high relative density (99.9%) and Archimedes density (99.7%) have been achieved. It is shown that when using low energy density (ED) levels, large cracks and porosities are a major problem, owing to incomplete fusion; however, small gas pores are prevalent at high-energy densities due to the dissolved gas particles in the melt pool. An inversely proportional relationship between ED and microhardness has also been observed. Lower ED decreases the melt pool size and temperature gradients but increases the cooling rate, creating a fine-grained microstructure, which restricts dislocation movement, therefore increasing the microhardness. The highest microhardness (116 HV0.2), which was obtained from one of the lowest EDs used (100 J/mm3), is 45% higher than as-cast AA2024-0, but 17% lower than wrought AA2024-T6 alloy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Vysochinskiy ◽  
Naureen Akhtar ◽  
Tord Nordmo ◽  
Mathias Rabjerg Strand ◽  
Adrian Vyssios ◽  
...  

The additive manufacturing has initially gained popularity for production of non-loadbearing parts and components or in the fields where the material strength and ductility are less important such as modelling and rapid prototyping. But as the technology develops, availability of metal additive manufacturing naturally dictates the desire to use the produced components in load-bearing parts. This requires not-only a thorough documentation on the mechanical properties but also additional and independent research to learn the expected level of variation of the mechanical properties and what factors affect them. The presented paper investigates strength, ductility, hardness, and microstructure of the AlSi10Mg alloy produced by the selective laser melting (SLM). The mechanical properties were determined through a series of uniaxial tension tests and supplementary hardness tests and rationalized with the microstructure evolution with regard to printing direction and heat treatment. The paper also addresses the effect of surface roughness on the mechanical properties of the material, by comparing the machined and net shape tension samples. As expected, the as-manufactured AlSi10Mg-alloy appears to be a semi-brittle alloy, but its microstructure can be altered, and ductility increased by a proper heat-treatment. The effect of surface layer removal on the measured mechanical properties is of particular interest.


2014 ◽  
Vol 693 ◽  
pp. 231-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Ackermann ◽  
Jiří Šafka ◽  
Petr Zelený ◽  
Martin Lachman ◽  
Petr Keller

The paper deals with evaluation of selected mechanical properties of tensile test specimens which were made from AlSi12 material by Direct Selective Laser Melting (DSLM) technology. Specimens were built in three various set-ups such as different angles towards building platform and various types of supporting structures in order to prove the influence of these parameters to mechanical properties of resulting product. The specimens were also subjected to material tests to reveal its inner structure, quality of a grain and chemical composition of the material. As a conclusion, the selection of the most suitable supporting structure and alignment of a model towards building platform are discussed. Mechanical parameters evaluated from tensile tests such as Young’s modulus (E), 0.2% proof stress (Re0,2) and tensile strength (Rm) are compared with values typical for the selected material AlSi12.


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