Combinatorial Alloy Design by Laser Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

The authors uses laser additive manufacturing (LAM) as a combinatorial method for synthesizing microstructurally and compositionally piecewise graded bulk alloys. Authors fabricate blocks consisting of a sequence of ≈500 μm thick tool steel layers, each with different chemical composition, by laser metal deposition where alloy powders are deposited layer-wise on a substrate. The reference materials are a Cr–Mo–V hot working tool steel and a Ni-based maraging steel. The layers between them consist of corresponding blends of the two materials with varying composition from layer to layer (alloy volume fractions 80:20, 60:40, 40:60, and 20:80). The bulk alloy is hot rolled and heat treated. Subsequently each layer is characterized for microstructure, chemical composition and mechanical properties using electron back scatter diffraction, tensile testing, and indentation. The approach is an efficient high-throughput method enabling rapid probing of novel compositional alloy blends. It can be applied for finding new alloys both, by LAM and for LAM. For the tool steel blends synthesized here, authors observe that the Cr–Mo–V tool steel, when mixed with the Ni-base maraging steel, can be continuously tuned for a strength-ductility profile in the range of 800–1650 MPa strength and 15–25% tensile elongation.