Abstract

Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is a 3D printing technology that can print metal parts with complex geometries without the design constraints of traditional manufacturing routes. However, the parts printed by LPBF normally contain many more pores than those made by conventional methods, which severely deteriorates their properties. Here, by combining in-situ high-speed high-resolution synchrotron x-ray imaging experiments and multi-physics modeling, we unveil the dynamics and mechanisms of pore motion and elimination in the LPBF process. We find that the high thermocapillary force, induced by the high temperature gradient in the laser interaction region, can rapidly eliminate pores from the melt pool during the LPBF process. The thermocapillary force driven pore elimination mechanism revealed here may guide the development of 3D printing approaches to achieve pore-free 3D printing of metals.

Department(s)

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Comments

This work is funded by the Department of Energy's Kansas City National Security Campus Managed by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies (FM&T), National Science Foundation, Intelligent Systems Center at Missouri S&T, and partially by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) from Argonne National Laboratory, provided by the Director, Office of Science, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 30 September 2019; the erratum is also available in Scholars' Mine: Publisher Correction: Pore Elimination Mechanisms during 3D Printing of Metals (Nature Communications, (2019), 10, 1, (3088), 10.1038/S41467-019-10973-9. The pdf available for download here is the corrected pdf.

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2041-1723

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2019 The Author(s), All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publication Date

01 Dec 2019

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