Publications

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Some of the primary barriers to widespread adoption of metal additive manufacturing (AM) are persistent defect formation in built components, high material costs, and lack of consistency in powder feedstock. To generate more reliable, complex-shaped metal parts, it is crucial to understand how feedstock properties change with reuse and how that affects build mechanical performance. Powder particles interacting with the energy source, yet not consolidated into an AM part can undergo a range of dynamic thermal interactions, resulting in variable particle behavior if reused. In this work, we present a systematic study of 316L powder properties from the virgin state through thirty powder reuses in the laser powder bed fusion process. Thirteen powder characteristics and the resulting AM build mechanical properties were investigated for both powder states. Results show greater variability in part ductility for the virgin state. The feedstock exhibited minor changes to size distribution, bulk composition, and hardness with reuse, but significant changes to particle morphology, microstructure, magnetic properties, surface composition, and oxide thickness. Additionally, sieved powder, along with resulting fume/condensate and recoil ejecta (spatter) properties were characterized. Formation mechanisms are proposed. It was discovered that spatter leads to formation of single crystal ferrite through large degrees of supercooling and massive solidification. Ferrite content and consequently magnetic susceptibility of the powder also increases with reuse, suggesting potential for magnetic separation as a refining technique for altered feedstock.

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AlSi10Mg tensile bars were additively manufactured using the powder-bed selective laser melting process. Samples were subjected to stress relief annealing and hot isostatic pressing. Tensile samples built using fresh, stored, and reused powder feedstock were characterized for microstructure, porosity, and mechanical properties. Fresh powder exhibited the best mechanical properties and lowest porosity while stored and reused powder exhibited inferior mechanical properties and higher porosity. The microstructure of stress relieved samples was fine and exhibited (001) texture in the z-build direction. Microstructure for hot isostatic pressed samples was coarsened with fainter (001) texture. To investigate surface and interior defects, scanning electron microscopy, optical fractography, and laser scanning microscopy techniques were employed. Hot isostatic pressing eliminated internal pores and reduced the size of surface porosity associated with the selective laser melting process. Hot isostatic pressing tended to increase ductility at the expense of decreasing strength. However, scatter in ductility of hot isostatic pressed parts suggests that the presence of unclosed surface porosity facilitated fracture with crack propagation inward from the surface of the part.

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The powder-bed laser additive manufacturing (AM) process is widely used in the fabrication of three-dimensional metallic parts with intricate structures, where kinetically controlled diffusion and microstructure ripening can be hindered by fast melting and rapid solidification. Therefore, the microstructure and physical properties of parts made by this process will be significantly different from their counterparts produced by conventional methods. This work investigates the microstructure evolution for an AM fabricated AlSi10Mg part from its nonequilibrium state toward equilibrium state. Special attention is placed on silicon dissolution, precipitate formation, collapsing of a divorced eutectic cellular structure, and microstructure ripening in the thermal annealing process. These events alter the size, morphology, length scale, and distribution of the beta silicon phase in the primary aluminum, and changes associated with elastic properties and microhardness are reported. The relationship between residual stress and silicon dissolution due to changes in lattice spacing is also investigated and discussed.

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Drawn 304L stainless steel tubing was subjected to 42 different annealing heat treatments with the goal of initializing a microstructural model to select a heat treatment to soften the tubing from a hardness of 305 Knoop to 225–275 Knoop. The amount of recrystallization and grain size caused by 18 heat treatments were analyzed via optical microscopy and image analysis, revealing the full range of recrystallization from 0 to 100%. The formation of carbides during the longer duration and higher-temperature heat treatments was monitored via transmission electron microscope evaluation. The experimental results informed a model which includes recovery, recrystallization, and grain growth to predict microstructure and hardness. After initialization of the model, it was able to predict hardness with a R2 value of 0.95 and recrystallization with an R2 value of 0.99. The model was then utilized in the design and testing of a heat treatment to soften the tubing.

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In this work, a crystal plasticity-finite element (CP-FE) model is used to investigate the effects of microstructural variability at a notch tip in tantalum single crystals and polycrystals. It is shown that at the macroscopic scale, the mechanical response of single crystals is sensitive to the crystallographic orientation while the response of polycrystals shows relatively small susceptibility to it. However, at the microscopic scale, the local stress and strain fields in the vicinity of the crack tip are completely determined by the local crystallographic orientation at the crack tip for both single and polycrystalline specimens with similar mechanical field distributions. Variability in the local metrics used (maximum von Mises stress and equivalent plastic strain at 3% deformation) for 100 different realizations of polycrystals fluctuates by up to a factor of 2-7 depending on the local crystallographic texture. Comparison with experimental data shows that the CP model captures variability in stress-strain response of polycrystals that can be attributed to the grain-scale microstructural variability. This work provides a convenient approach to investigate fluctuations in the mechanical behavior of polycrystalline materials induced by grain morphology and crystallographic orientations.

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We are developing the capability to track material changes through numerous possible steps of the manufacturing process, such as forging, machining, and welding. In this work, experimental and modeling results are presented for a multiple-step process in which an ingot of stainless steel 304L is forged at high temperature, then machined into a thin slice, and finally subjected to an autogenous GTA weld. The predictions of temperature, yield stress, and recrystallized volume fraction are compared to experimental results.

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This report presents an experimental study motivated by results obtained during the 2013 Sandia Fracture Challenge. The challenge involved A286 steel, shear-dominated compression specimens whose load-deflection response contained a load maximum fol- lowed by significant displacement under decreasing load, ending with a catastrophic fracture. Blind numerical simulations deviated from the experiments well before the maximum load and did not predict the failure displacement. A series of new tests were conducted on specimens machined from the original A286 steel stock to learn more about the deformation and failure processes in the specimen and potentially improve future numerical simulations. The study consisted of several uniaxial tension tests to explore anisotropy in the material, and a set of new tests on the compression speci- men. In some compression specimen tests, stereo digital image correlation (DIC) was used to measure the surface strain fields local to the region of interest. In others, the compression specimen was loaded to a given displacement prior to failure, unloaded, sectioned, and imaged under the microscope to determine when material damage first appeared and how it spread. The experiments brought the following observations to light. The tensile tests revealed that the plastic response of the material is anisotropic. DIC during the shear- dominated compression tests showed that all three in-plane surface strain components had maxima in the order of 50% at the maximum load. Sectioning of the specimens revealed no signs of material damage at the point where simulations deviated from the experiments. Cracks and other damage did start to form approximately when the max- imum load was reached, and they grew as the load decreased, eventually culminating in catastrophic failure of the specimens. In addition to the steel specimens, a similar study was carried out for aluminum 7075-T651 specimens. These specimens achieved much lower loads and displacements, and failure occurred very close to the maximum in the load-deflection response. No material damage was observed in these specimens, even when failure was imminent. In the future, we plan to use these experimental results to improve numerical simu- lations of the A286 steel experiments, and to improve plasticity and failure models for the Al 7075 stock. The ultimate goal of our efforts is to increase our confidence in the results of numerical simulations of elastic-plastic structural behavior and failure.

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Time dependent deformation in the form of creep and stress relaxation is not often considered a factor when designing structural alloy parts for use at room temperature. However, creep and stress relaxation do occur at room temperature (0.09-0.21 T_m for alloys in this report) in structural alloys. This report will summarize the available literature on room temperature creep, present creep data collected on various structural alloys, and finally compare the acquired data to equations used in the literature to model creep behavior. Based on evidence from the literature and fitting of various equations, the mechanism which causes room temperature creep is found to include dislocation generation as well as exhaustion.

This report provides a detailed characterization Tri-lab Tantalum (Ta) plate jointly purchased from HCStark Inc. by Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Data in this report was compiled from series of material and properties characterization experiments carried out at Sandia (SNL) and Los Alamos (LANL) Laboratories through a leveraged effort funded by the C2 campaign. Results include microstructure characterization detailing the crystallographic texture of the material and an increase in grain size near the end of the rolled plate. Mechanical properties evaluations include, compression cylinder, sub-scale tension specimen, micohardness and instrumented indentation testing. The plate was found to have vastly superior uniformity when compare with previously characterized wrought Ta material. Small but measurable variations in microstructure and properties were noted at the end, and at the top and bottom edges of the plate.

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