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Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM) enables economical production of complex lightweight structures as well as patient individual implants. Due to these possibilities the additive manufacturing technology gains increasing importance in the aircraft and the medical industry. Yet these industries obtain high quality standards and demand predictability of material properties for static and dynamic load cases. However, especially fatigue and crack propagation properties are not sufficiently determined. Therefore this paper presents an analysis and simulation of crack propagation behavior considering Laser Additive Manufacturing specific defects, such as porosity and surface roughness. For the mechanical characterization of laser additive manufactured titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V, crack propagation rates are experimentally determined and used for an analytical modeling and simulation of fatigue. Using experimental results from HCF tests and simulated data, the fatigue and crack resistance performance is analyzed considering material specific defects and surface roughness. The accumulated results enable the reliable prediction of the defects influence on fatigue life of laser additive manufactured titanium components.

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Additive manufacturing technologies are in the process of establishing themselves as an alternative production technology to conventional manufacturing, such as casting or milling. Especially laser additive manufacturing (LAM) enables the production of metallic parts with mechanical properties comparable to conventionally manufactured components. Due to the high geometrical freedom in LAM, the technology enables the production of ultra-light weight designs, and therefore gains increasing importance in aircraft and space industry. The high quality standards of these industries demand predictability of material properties for static and dynamic load cases. However, fatigue properties especially in the very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) regime until 10 9 cycles have not been sufficiently determined yet. Therefore, this paper presents an analysis of fatigue properties of laser additive manufactured Ti-6Al-4V under cyclic tension-tension until 10 7 cycles and tension-compression load until 10 9 cycles. For the analysis of laser additive manufactured titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V, Woehler fatigue tests under tension-tension and tension-compression were carried out in the high cycle and VHCF regime. Specimens in stress-relieved as well as hot-isostatic-pressed conditions were analyzed regarding crack initiation site, mean stress sensitivity, and overall fatigue performance. The determined fatigue properties show values in the range of conventionally manufactured Ti-6Al-4V with particularly good performance for hot-isostatic-pressed additive-manufactured material. For all conditions, the results show no conventional fatigue limit but a constant increase in fatigue life with decreasing loads. No effects of test frequency on life span could be determined. However, independently of testing principle, a shift of crack initiation from surface to internal initiation could be observed with increasing cycles to failure.

Selective laser melting (SLM) is a relatively new additive manufacturing (AM) technology which uses laser energy for manufacturing in a layered pattern. The unique manufacturing process of SLM offers a competitive advantage in case of very complex and highly customized parts having quasi-static mechanical properties comparable to those of wrought materials. However, it is not currently being harnessed in dynamic applications due to the lack of reliable fatigue data. The manufacturing process shows competitive advantages particularly in the aerospace and medical industry in which Ti-6Al-4V is commonly used, especially for high performance and dynamic applications. Therefore, in this exploratory research, high cycle fatigue (HCF) tests were performed for as-built, polished and shot-peened samples to investigate the capability of SLM for these applications. As-built samples showed a drastic decrement of fatigue limit due to poor surface quality (Ra ≈ 13 µm) obtained from the SLM process. Polishing improved the fatigue limit to more than 500 MPa, the typical value for base material. The effect of shot-peening proved to be antithetical to the expected results. In this context, fractographic analysis showed that very small remnant porosity (less than 0.4%) played a critical role in fatigue performance.

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