Mechanical properties of thin wall specimens produced by additive manufacturing methods

增材制造（AM）技术涉及使用激光或电子束打印组件，以熔化所选材料粉末“床”中的特定位置，然后固化成组件的一层;三维（3D）组件然后逐层构建。粉末的粒径在几十微米的尺寸范围内，这意味着每层的厚度也是几十微米的量级。此外，增材制造是一种环保技术，因为它最大限度地减少了材料浪费，并能够将许多不同的部件联合收割机组合成一个复杂的部件;这简化了装配，减少了需要储存的备件数量。然而，复杂的部件将包含非常不同的厚度，并且问题之一将是，对于相同的AM加工条件，部件的特性将随着截面厚度而强烈变化。我们正在解决的具体问题是确定粉末“特性”（例如尺寸，形状）和加工条件（例如光束类型，熔化功率）对1.0 mm厚范围内的增材制造粉末床熔融（AM-PBF）打印样本的机械性能的影响。成功打印这些具有所需机械性能的所谓“薄壁”样品将大大增加AM在工业中的应用。为了实现这一目标，本研究拥有非常强大的工业支持，AP &C是一家金属粉末公司，一直在与AM设备供应商和制造公司制定非常强大的AM战略。这项研究将由麦吉尔大学的学术研究人员进行，该大学将培训开发AM所需的技术先进的人力资源。这项工作将由Stephen Yue教授领导，他自2007年以来一直参与AM研究，Javier Arreguin Zavala博士是AP&C的高级材料项目经理，负责特殊项目的开发。

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology involves printing a component using a laser or electron beam to melt specific locations in a 'bed' of powder of the material of choice, which then solidifies into a layer of the component; the three dimensional (3D) component is then built up layer by layer. The powders have particle diameters in the size range of tens of microns, which means the thickness of each layer is also of the order of tens of microns. In addition, AM is an environmentally friendly technology because it minimizes materials wastage and has the ability to combine a lot of different components into one complex part; this simplifies assembly and reduces the number of spare parts that need to be stored. However, a complex part will incorporate wildly different thicknesses and one of the problems will be that, for the same AM processing conditions, the properties of a component will vary strongly with section thicknesses. The specific problem we are tackling is to determine the influence of powder 'characteristics' (e.g. size, shape) and processing conditions (e.g. beam type, melting power) on the mechanical properties of additive manufacturing powder bed fusion (AM-PBF) printed specimens in the range of 1.0 mm thick. The success of printing these so-called 'thin wall' specimens with desired mechanical properties will massively increase the incorporation of AM in industry. In order to achieve this goal, this research boasts very strong industrial support from AP &C, a metal powder company that has been developing a very strong AM strategy with AM equipment suppliers and manufacturing companies. The research will be performed by academic researchers at McGill University, which will train the technologically advanced manpower required to exploit AM. This work will be led by Professor Stephen Yue, who has been involved in AM research since 2007, and Dr. Javier Arreguin Zavala, who is the senior material project manager in AP&C and in charge of the development of special projects.