Work hardening in selective laser melted Al-12Si alloy

Abstract

Selective laser melting (SLM) is one of the additive manufacturing processes that has been extensively studied, due to its potential to fabricate materials with improved functionalities and properties. Al-12Si is one of the casting alloy that has been extensively studied using SLM. It has been found that the SLM processed Al-12Si is very brittle but rather tough. The present letter is focused to investigate the strain hardening behavior and its exponent on the SLM processed Al-12Si alloy. The present study is a preliminary example to evaluate a possible correlation between strain hardening rate, strain hardening exponent, and to the ductility and toughness.