Parent Grain Reconstruction in an Additive Manufactured Titanium Alloy

Abstract

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) is an excellent tool for characterizing the crystallographic orientation aspects of the microstructure of polycrystalline material. In some additively manufactured materials, the material may undergo a phase transformation during the forming process. Although EBSD can only characterize the final microstructure, neighbor information from orientation mapping allows the microstructure before the phase transformation to be reconstructed, provided that the parent–child orientation relationship is known. An investigation of the effectiveness of the reconstruction algorithms for capturing the grain size as well as orientation gradients is undertaken with a focus on additively manufactured Ti-alloy. The EBSD results, coupled with reconstruction algorithms, reveal information on the prior grain size as well as the plastic flow of the material.