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Effects of Hatch Distance on the Microstructure and Mechanical Anisotropy of 316 L Stainless Steel Fabricated by Laser Powder Bed Fusion

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Abstract

Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) has unique metal processing characteristics that allow rapid heating and melting of metal powder to form the 3D objects in a layer-by-layer manner. The parts fabricated through LPBF inherited anisotropy behaviors in microstructure and mechanical performance. To effectively ensure the as-built part functionality in terms of microstructure and mechanical performance, scanning direction (SD), building direction (BD), and transverse direction (TD) were selected to be analyzed to build a quantitative process-quality model to control the tensile strength in this study. The influence of hatch distance on microstructure evolution is also investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis indicated that (200) peak intensity of γ austenite (fcc) drop-down with hatch distance increased from 0.06 mm to 0.10 mm. Broadening of remelting zone of two adjacent tracks improved the epitaxial growth of column grain. The different ratios of tensile strength and elongation between scanning direction and building direction are 9.23, 19.26% with hatch distance of 0.06 mm, dropped to 3.27, 10.31% with hatch distance of 0.10 mm, respectively. When the hatch distance is over 0.1 mm, the tensile strength and elongation of TD samples drop sharply due to the lack of overlap between molten pools. The different ratio of mechanical anisotropy decreases with hatch distance increases, which also demonstrates that hatch distance can alter the anisotropic of LPBF-ed parts.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is funded by “Special project for the central government to guide local scientific and Technological Development of Hebei province” (Project Number: 226Z1903G) and “National Natural Science Foundation of China” (Project Number: 61802108).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300130, China

    Zhengyan Zhang, Shun Wang & Haitao Liu

  2. National Engineering Research Center for Technological Innovation Method and Tool, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300130, China

    Zhengyan Zhang & Shun Wang

  3. Key Laboratory for New Type of Functional Materials in Hebei Province, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300130, China

    Lei Wang

  4. Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Department, Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA

    Xinyi Xiao

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  1. Zhengyan Zhang
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Contributions

ZZ: Investigation, Data curation, Methodology. SW: Writing—original draft, Data curation, Methodology. HL: Writing—reviewing & editing. LW: Methodology, Writing—reviewing & editing. XX: Writing—reviewing & editing.

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Correspondence to Lei Wang.

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Zhang, Z., Wang, S., Liu, H. et al. Effects of Hatch Distance on the Microstructure and Mechanical Anisotropy of 316 L Stainless Steel Fabricated by Laser Powder Bed Fusion. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 32, 4757–4767 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-022-07416-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-022-07416-w

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