High Strength Al-Sc Based Alloy for Selective Laser Melting
Qingbo Jia1,2, Paul Rometsch1,2, Aijun Huang1,2, Xinhua Wu1,2
1Monash Centre for Additive Manufacturing, Notting Hill, VIC 3168, Australia;
2Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia;
Email: qingbo.jia@monash.edu
Selective Laser Melting (SLM) of metallic components for industrial applications have attracted much attention in recent years due to its geometrical flexibility of modern industrial parts design and making. There is now a growing demand, especially in the aerospace industry, for lightweight components to be built in this manner. However, the number of qualified aluminium alloys for SLM is still rather limited and the resulting mechanical properties are often mediocre. This is because most of the current applied aluminium alloys are designed for traditional casting and few of them are developed to take advantage of the benefits offered by the SLM process. In the present study, a novel Al-Sc based alloy was developed specifically for SLM. The fabricated samples showed very high yield strength, which is more than double of currently used Al-Si based alloys for SLM. Besides, the developed alloy also possess outstanding ductility and excellent thermal stability compared with existing aluminium alloys for SLM.