Abstract
The microstructure and mechanical properties of Al-20Si produced by selective laser melting (SLM) are investigated for different heat treatment conditions. As a result of the high cooling rate during processing, the as-built SLM material displays a microstructure consisting of a supersaturated Al(Si) solid solution along with heavily refined eutectic Si and Si particles. The Si particles become coarser, and the eutectic Si gradually changes its morphology from fibrous to plate-like shape with increasing annealing temperature. The microstructural variations occurring during heat treatment significantly affect the mechanical behavior of the samples. The yield and ultimate strengths decrease from 374 and 506 MPa for the as-built SLM material to 162 and 252 MPa for the sample annealed at 673 K, whereas the ductility increases from 1.6 to 8.7%. This offers the possibility to tune microstructure and corresponding properties of the Al-20Si SLM parts to meet specific requirements.
Highlights
Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing technique that produces three dimensional parts directly from CAD data [1,2,3]
The intensity of the Si peaks is reduced, as already observed for Al-12Si processed by SLM [15], corroborating that a large amount of Si atoms is dissolved into the Al lattice
The effects of heat treatment on microstructure and the tensile properties of the Al-20Si alloy processed by SLM have been investigated
Summary
Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing technique that produces three dimensional parts directly from CAD data [1,2,3]. Al-based alloys are of significant importance as lightweight structural materials because of the combination of high strength and low density [8,9,10] and SLM is attractive for the production of Al-based components with customized geometries and properties. Prashanth et al [15] have observed an extremely fine cellular structure for Al-12Si alloy processed by SLM. Such a microstructure leads to yield and tensile strengths which are respectively four and two times higher than the corresponding values of the cast material [15]
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