Towards an Understanding of Electron-Beam Direct Manufactured Ti-6Al-4V: An Integrated Computational and Experimental Approach

The use of additive manufacturing is gaining visibility as a candidate manufacturing approach in aerospace applications. Once such approach is electron beam direct manufacturing which is suitable for large structural components. However, in order to gain even broader acceptance and ultimately be exploited for direct manufacturing of components, it is necessary to develop a robust design knowledge base that provides designers the ability to virtually assess the materials properties that are likely to be obtained following an direct manufacture of an article, and the degree of confidence that the designer has on the properties predicted.  The preliminary components of such a structure have been developed, and includes a multi-physics model of the process, prediction of spatial variations of elemental species, a rigorous characterization effort to understand microstructural differences in additively manufactured Ti-6AL-4V, and a physically based model for the prediction of properties for a given combination of composition and microstructure in Ti-6Al-4V.