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From gradient to homogenous: thermal behavior-induced microstructure evolution and mechanical properties of selective laser-melted TiB2p/2024Al composite

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Abstract

As one of the important additive manufacturing techniques, selective laser melting (SLM) has shown great advantage in the production of metal matrix composite components with complex geometry. However, the layer-by-layer manufacturing procedure causes a nonnegligible thermal accumulation and cycling. Thus, the SLM-deposited component always presents gradient microstructure and mechanical properties. In this work, the dense TiB2p/2024Al composite prepared by SLM was employed to investigate the heat-induced microstructure evolution and mechanical properties. The as-deposited composite presents a uniform distribution of TiB2 reinforced particle in α-Al matrix with an oriented < 100 > texture α-Al dendrite microstructure. The yield strength (YS), ultimate tensile strength (UTS), and the elongation of as-deposited sample increase from 230.06 MPa, 302.52 MPa, and 4.49% to 244.17 MPa, 365.36 MPa, and 11.48% from the bottom to top regions. According to the TEM results, this phenomenon is attributed to the high cooling rate induced low content of θ-Al2Cu phase at the bottom of the sample. In addition, agglomeration of the TiB2 particles due to the insufficient convention is responsible to the poor elongation at the bottom of the sample. After the solid solution and aging heat treatment (T6), thanks to the uniform distribution of S strengthening phases, this gradient in microstructure and mechanical properties in the deposit can be eliminated, and the deposit presents higher YS, UTS, and a lower elongation of 380.23 MPa, 421.50 MPa, and 3.14%.

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Funding

The work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFB1100100), National Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 52005411), the Research Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing (NPU), China (Grant No. 2020-TZ-02), and the China Scholarship Council (Grant No.202106290075).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arts Et Métiers Institute of Technology, MSMP, HESAM Université, 51006, Châlons-en-Champagne, France

    Qingzheng Wang, Mohamed El Mansori & Nan Kang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an Shaanxi, 710072, People’s Republic of China

    Qingzheng Wang, Xin Lin, Yang Cao & Weidong Huang

  3. Key Laboratory of Metal High Performance Additive Manufacturing and Innovative Design, MIIT China, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710072, People’s Republic of China

    Qingzheng Wang, Xin Lin, Yang Cao & Weidong Huang

  4. Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Mohamed El Mansori

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  1. Qingzheng Wang
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Contributions

Qingzheng Wang: investigation, data curation, methodology, writing—original draft. Mohamed El Mansori: review and editing, supervision. Xin Lin: funding acquisition, project administration, resources, supervision validation, writing—review and editing. Yang CAO: investigation and thermal simulation. Nan Kang: writing—review and editing, supervision. Weidong Huang: funding acquisition, resources.

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Correspondence to Qingzheng Wang, Xin Lin or Nan Kang.

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Wang, Q., Lin, X., Mansori, M.E. et al. From gradient to homogenous: thermal behavior-induced microstructure evolution and mechanical properties of selective laser-melted TiB2p/2024Al composite. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 122, 4341–4352 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-09882-x

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