Design of novel materials for additive manufacturing - Isotropic microstructure and high defect tolerance

Electron Beam Melting (EBM) is a powder-bed additive manufacturing technology enabling the production of complex metallic parts with generally good mechanical properties. However, the performance of powder-bed based additively manufactured materials is governed by multiple factors that are difficult to control. Alloys that solidify in cubic crystal structures are usually affected by strong anisotropy due to the formation of columnar grains of preferred orientation. Moreover, processing induced defects and porosity detrimentally influence static and cyclic mechanical properties. The current study presents results on processing of a metastable austenitic CrMnNi steel by EBM. Due to multiple phase transformations induced by intrinsic heat-treatment in the layer-wise EBM process the material develops a fine-grained microstructure almost without a preferred crystallographic grain orientation. The deformation-induced phase transformation yields high damage tolerance and, thus, excellent mechanical properties less sensitive to process-induced inhomogeneities. Various scan strategies were applied to evaluate the width of an appropriate process window in terms of microstructure evolution, porosity and change of chemical composition.