High fatigue resistance in a titanium alloy via near-void-free 3D printing

Zhan Qu; Zhenjun Zhang; Rui Liu; Ling Xu; Yining Zhang; Xiaotao Li; Zhenkai Zhao; Qiqiang Duan; Shaogang Wang; Shujun Li; Yingjie Ma; Xiaohong Shao; Rui Yang; Jürgen Eckert; Robert O Ritchie; Zhefeng Zhang

doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07048-1

High fatigue resistance in a titanium alloy via near-void-free 3D printing

Nature. 2024 Feb;626(8001):999-1004. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07048-1. Epub 2024 Feb 28.

Authors

Zhan Qu^{1

2}, Zhenjun Zhang^{3

4}, Rui Liu¹, Ling Xu⁵, Yining Zhang¹, Xiaotao Li¹, Zhenkai Zhao¹, Qiqiang Duan¹, Shaogang Wang¹, Shujun Li¹, Yingjie Ma¹, Xiaohong Shao¹, Rui Yang^{1

2

6}, Jürgen Eckert^{7

8}, Robert O Ritchie⁹, Zhefeng Zhang^{10

11}

Affiliations

¹ Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, PR China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Shenyang, PR China.
³ Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, PR China. zjzhang@imr.ac.cn.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Shenyang, PR China. zjzhang@imr.ac.cn.
⁵ Shenyang Institute of Engineering, Shenyang, PR China.
⁶ Center for Adaptive System Engineering, School of Creativity and Art, Shanghai Tech University, Shanghai, PR China.
⁷ Erich Schmid Institute of Materials Science, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Leoben, Austria.
⁸ Department of Materials Science, Montanuniveristät Leoben, Leoben, Austria.
⁹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. roritchie@lbl.gov.
¹⁰ Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, PR China. zhfzhang@imr.ac.cn.
¹¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Shenyang, PR China. zhfzhang@imr.ac.cn.

PMID: 38418915
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07048-1

Abstract

The advantage of 3D printing-that is, additive manufacturing (AM) of structural materials-has been severely compromised by their disappointing fatigue properties^1,2. Commonly, poor fatigue properties appear to result from the presence of microvoids induced by current printing process procedures^3,4. Accordingly, the question that we pose is whether the elimination of such microvoids can provide a feasible solution for marked enhancement of the fatigue resistance of void-free AM (Net-AM) alloys. Here we successfully rebuild an approximate void-free AM microstructure in Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy by development of a Net-AM processing technique through an understanding of the asynchronism of phase transformation and grain growth. We identify the fatigue resistance of such AM microstructures and show that they lead to a high fatigue limit of around 1 GPa, exceeding the fatigue resistance of all AM and forged titanium alloys as well as that of other metallic materials. We confirm the high fatigue resistance of Net-AM microstructures and the potential advantages of AM processing in the production of structural components with maximum fatigue strength, which is beneficial for further application of AM technologies in engineering fields.