Validation of a Miniature Rectangular Tension Test Specimen for Metallic Additive Manufacturing Materials

Abstract

In powder bed additive manufacturing part production, test coupons are often printed together with the actual parts. However, the amount of material required for the tensile test coupons based on current standards are large compared with typical powder bed component sizes. The shortest gauge length for rectangular tensile specimens is 25 mm for the ASTM E8/E8M subsize specimen 6 mm wide. In this work, a scaled-down version of the subsize specimen 6 mm wide with a gauge length of 12.5 mm was tested in a commercially available universal testing frame. The tensile results of this specimen were validated against the standard specimen using clip-on and video extensometers. The thickness range and width tolerance range of the specimen was also investigated. The usage of this specimen was demonstrated in capturing the orientation effects on tensile properties in a laser powder bed fusion machine.