Microstructure Engineering via Metal Additive Manufacturing

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• Professor Sophie Primig, UNSW Sydney
• Wednesday 29 May 2024, 14:00-15:00
• Oatley 1 Meeting Room, Department of Engineering.

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Microstructure engineering of alloys, i.e., control over their microstructural evolution via advancements to their thermo-mechanical processing routes has been used for decades to unlock superior properties. Some metallurgists refer to this as ‘heat it and beat it’ approaches in conventional, subtractive manufacturing.

However, when using metal additive manufacturing (AM) for making engineering parts due to advantages such as design-freedom and low waste, the ‘beat it’ part of the previous approach becomes superfluous and, in fact, undesirable. While much of the initial research on AM has focused on finding printing parameters to achieve fully dense parts, recent advancements in the understanding of the physical metallurgy of AM have unlocked opportunities for AM microstructure engineering, either in-situ (during printing) or via post-AM heat treatments. Alloys undergo multiple cycles of heating/cooling and thermo-plastic straining during AM, following solidification. The same AM cycles can, therefore, be engineered to induce synergistic combinations of heat and strain, the two basic tools used in most conventional processing routes.

I will present hand-picked examples from our recent research on AM microstructure engineering of high-performance alloys including various stainless steels and Ni-based superalloys. I will explain how we harnessed the thermo-mechanical AM signature to introduce desirable types of interfaces, clustering of solutes, precipitation, and even site-specific phase transformations. Many of these approaches eliminate the need for time-consuming and expensive post-AM treatments, leading to superior mechanical and corrosion properties in the as-built state.

Sophie Primig is an Alcoa Distinguished Professor in the School of Materials Science & Engineering at UNSW Sydney. She was awarded her PhD from Montanuniversität Leoben (Austria) in 2012. She moved to UNSW Sydney in 2015, initially as Lecturer. She held an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (2018-2020) and was part of the UNSW Scientia Program for the top 10% early-to-mid-career researchers (2019-2022). Her research interests are in Physical Metallurgy. She has a track record in both fundamental and applied research. The goal of her research program is to advance processing routes to achieve superior properties in high performance alloys for challenging applications such as aerospace and defence. Sophie is an Editor of Journal of Materials Science and current Chair of the TMS Phase Transformations Committee.

This talk is part of the Engineering - Mechanics, Materials and Design (Div C) - talks and events series.

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• Engineering - Mechanics, Materials and Design (Div C) - talks and events
• Oatley 1 Meeting Room, Department of Engineering

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