Influence of post-heat treatment on the microstructure and mechanical properties of Al-Cu-Mg-Zr alloy manufactured by selective laser melting

The properties of modified conventional wrought aluminum alloys cannot be significantly enhanced by normal post-heat treatment in that the fine-grained strengthening,arising from high cooling rate in SLM,is underutilized.In this work,compared with the normal T6 heat treatment,a novel simple direct aging regime was proposed to maintain the grain-boundary strengthening and to utilize the precipitation strengthening of secondary AlZr.It was found that a heterogeneous grain structure,which consisted of ultrafine equiaxed(~0.82μm)and columnar(~1.80μm)grains at the bottom and top of molten pool,respectively,was formed in the SLM processed sample.After direct aging(DA),the ultrafine grains were maintained and a mass of spherical coherent L1-AlZr particles with a mean radius of approximately1.15 nm was precipitated.In contrast,after solution treatment and aging(STA),a significant grain coarsening occurred in the equiaxed grain region.Meanwhile,the coarsening L1-AlZr particles,nano-sized S phases and GPB zones were detected in the STA sample.This subsequently induced that the yield strength of the DA sample(~435 MPa)was higher than that of the STA sample(~402 MPa)owing to the grain boundary strengthening and precipitation strengthening.Both the STA and DA samples exhibited a higher strength than that of the other SLMed Al-Cu-Mg series alloys;this was comparable to that of the wrought AA2024-T6 alloy(~393 MPa).Both the STA and DA samples exhibited a higher strength than that of the other SLMed Al-Cu-Mg series alloys;this was comparable to that of the wrought AA2024-T6alloy(~393 MPa).