Selective Laser Melting of Ti Composites: Latest Developments

Ti and Ti alloys are wonderful metal materials,showing excellent corrosion resistance,high specific strength and outstanding biocompatibility[1-2].They have been widely used in a variety of industries,including aerospace engineering,biomedical enginee-ring,off-shore drilling,automobile industry and even jewelry industry[1-2].To further improve their performance for satisfying the ever increasing challenging demands,Ti-based metal matrix composite becomes a cutting-edge research direction[3-4].However,intrinsic properties of most Ti materials,such as low thermal conductivity,high chemical reactivity and hexagonal close packed crystal structure,make their machining rather difficult and also push up the cost of using Ti products.Considering reinforcement phases of Ti are often hard-and-refractory ceramic particles,it is even harder to fabricate Ti composite using conventional fabrication methods[1-4].