Additive manufacturing of Ni-based superalloys: Residual stress, mechanisms of crack formation and strategies for crack inhibition

The additive manufacturing(AM)of Ni-based superalloys has attracted extensive interest from both academia and industry due to its unique capabilities to fabricate complex and high-performance components for use in high-end industrial systems.However,the intense temperature gradient induced by the rapid heating and cooling processes of AM can generate high levels of residual stress and metastable chemical and structural states,inevitably leading to severe metallurgical defects in Ni-based superalloys.Cracks are the greatest threat to these materials’integrity as they can rapidly propagate and thereby cause sudden and non-predictable failure.Consequently,there is a need for a deeper understanding of residual stress and cracking mechanisms in additively manufactured Ni-based superalloys and ways to potentially prevent cracking,as this knowledge will enable the wider application of these unique materials.To this end,this paper comprehensively reviews the residual stress and the various mechanisms of crack formation in Ni-based superalloys during AM.In addition,several common methods for inhibiting crack formation are presented to assist the research community to develop methods for the fabrication of crack-free additively manufactured components.

Mechanism of hot-rolling crack formation in lean duplex stainless steel 2101

The thermoplasticity of duplex stainless steel 2205（DSS2205） is better than that of lean duplex steel 2101（LDX2101）, which undergoes severe cracking during hot rolling. The microstructure, microhardness, phase ratio, and recrystallization dependence of the deformation compatibility of LDX2101 and DSS2205 were investigated using optical microscopy（OM）, electron backscatter diffraction（EBSD）, Thermo-Calc software, and transmission electron microscopy（TEM）. The results showed that the phase-ratio transformations of LDX2101 and DSS2205 were almost equal under the condition of increasing solution temperature. Thus, the phase transformation was not the main cause for the hot plasticity difference of these two steels. The grain size of LDX2101 was substantially greater than that of DSS2205, and the microhardness difference of LDX2101 was larger than that of DSS2205. This difference hinders the transfer of strain from ferrite to austenite. In the rolling process, the ferrite grains of LDX2101 underwent continuous softening and were substantially refined. However, although little recrystallization occurred at the boundaries of austenite, serious deformation accumulated in the interior of austenite, leading to a substantial increase in hardness. The main cause of crack formation is the microhardness difference between ferrite and austenite.

Crack and size-dependence of shear modulus in a drying particulate film

We utilized controlled vertical drying deposition (CVDD) method,which can fabricate a uniform face-center-cubic (FCC) structure film,to investigate the crack formation and the size dependence of shear modulus in a drying particulate film.We found that both crack spacing and shear modulus depend on colloidal particle size.They drop with increase of particle radius (R) in a single range.Furthermore,compared with the shear modulus variation of a dry particulate film,it was found that both solid part and liquid part in a drying particulate film play equivalent roles in the film mechanical behavior.