Corrosion Resistance of Additive Manufactured Titanium Alloy Parts: The Effect of Recycled Powders

Abstract

The possibility to reduce costs of the additive manufacturing (AM) technologies by using recycled powders is still an open question. The present paper aims to investigate the effect of using virgin and recycled powders on the corrosion resistance of Ti6Al4V titanium alloy additive manufactured parts. Although the study of the electrochemical behaviour of titanium parts produced by using AM is present in the literature, the corrosion resistance of samples manufactured using recycled powders is less investigated. This work would like to contribute to the deepening of this aspect. The experimental investigations have been carried out on as-built samples as well as on samples after mechanical polishing. The metallographic observations of additive manufactured samples showed a martensitic microstructure inside the prior β grain grew up as columnar structure. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed the presence of titanium oxide in rutile crystallographic phase. The electrochemical characterisation unveiled the lower corrosion resistance of the as-built additive manufactured components compared to the traditional counterpart. It also highlighted the effect due to the use of recycled powders when the bulk of the samples has been investigated.