The microstructure and mechanical properties of selectively laser melted AlSi10Mg: The effect of a conventional T6-like heat treatment

By N. Aboulkhair, I. Maskery, Christopher John Tuck, Ian Ashcroft, N. Everitt. 2016

610 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Selective laser melting (SLM) of aluminium is of research interest because of its potential benefits to high value manufacturing applications in the aerospace and automotive industries. In order to demonstrate the credibility of SLM Al parts, their mechanical properties need to be studied. In this paper, the nano-, micro-, and macro-scale mechanical properties of SLM AlSi10Mg were examined. In addition, the effect of a conventional T6-like heat treatment was investigated and correlated to the generated microstructure. Nanoindentation showed uniform hardness within the SLM material. Significant spatial variation was observed after heat treatment due to phase transformation. It was found that the SLM material's micro-hardness exceeded its die-cast counterpart. Heat treatment softened the material, reducing micro-hardness from 125±1 HV to 100±1 HV. An ultimate tensile strength (333 MPa), surpassing that of the die cast counterpart was achieved, which was slightly reduced by heat treatment (12%) alongside a significant gain in strain-to-failure (~threefold). Significantly high compressive yield strength was recorded for the as-built material with the ability to withstand high compressive strains. The SLM characteristic microstructure yielded enhanced strength under loading, outperforming cast material. The use of a T6-like heat treatment procedure also modified the properties of the material to yield a potentially attractive compromise between the material's strength and ductility making it more suitable for a wider range of applications and opening up further opportunities for the additive manufacturing process and alloy combination.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/601352ca4124237e8837da8d4ce2d1d1db532cdc

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1. N. Aboulkhair
2. L. Parry
3. M. Simonelli
4. Richard J. M. Hague
5. A. Aremu
6. Ricky Wildman
7. R. Casati
8. A. Clare

Citations in the corpus

• Effects of Platform Pre-Heating and Thermal-Treatment Strategies on Properties of AlSi10Mg Alloy Processed by Selective Laser Melting (2018, background): “Evidence of laser tracks, and of the related heat-affected zones, also disappeared during solution annealing [3,9,13,15,19].”
• 3D printing of Aluminium alloys: Additive Manufacturing of Aluminium alloys using selective laser melting (2019, methodology): “The second perspective is the metallurgy where the finer microstructures developed in SLM materials can enhance certain mechanical properties for various materials systems [124].”
• A mechanical property evaluation of graded density Al-Si10-Mg lattice structures manufactured by selective laser melting (2016, methodology): “They had 45 mm gauge 190 length, 9 mm gauge diameter, and were manufactured with their long axes perpendicular to the SLM build platform[40].”