A review on additive manufacturing of SS-Ni multi-material fabrication

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is an emerging technology used to fabricate complex and near net shape components with minimum tooling and material wastage. This technology has found its application in biomedical, aerospace, automobile and structural elements. Multi material additive manufacturing (MMAM) process is able to manufacture components built with a combination of different materials like metals, ceramics, and reinforced materials to achieve the desired properties at a specific location. Many multi-material combinations have been fabricated through MMAM such as Al-Fe, Al-Cu, SS-Ni, Ni-Ti, Ti-SS, diamond-W-Cu etc. The most common combination among these discussed materials are SS-Ni multi-material for its wide range of applications in gas turbine parts, energy industry, petrochemical industry, marine industry, nuclear fission reactors, aerospace structure and aerospace engines. The processing of SS-Ni multi-material using LPBF, DED and WAAM has been found to provide superior properties such as high strength at extreme temperature environment, corrosion resistance, oxidation resistance, higher toughness at low cost when compared with conventional manufacturing methods thereby, motivating the present review on SS-Ni multi-material AM. This review aims to summarize the various methods used for the fabrication of SS-Ni multi-material AM, different combination strategies and its effect on the quality of fabrication, their microstructure variations, property enhancement, challenges and applications.