Effects of powder atomisation on microstructural and mechanical behaviour of l-pbf processed steels

In this research, steel alloys based on the Fe-Cr-Mo, Fe-Cr-Mn and Fe-Cr-Mo-Mn-Ni systems have been designed, produced by different atomisation techniques, and processed by laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) to investigate their microstructural and mechanical behaviour. Both gas atomisation and water atomisation were considered for powder preparation. The resulting different flowability of powders, hence a different densification behaviour during processing, could be compensated by tuning the L-PBF parameters and by the application of a post treatment to improve flowability of the water atomised powders. In agreement with thermodynamic calculations, small-size oxide-based nonmetallic inclusions of the type SiO2, MnO-SiO2, Cr2 O3-SiO2 were found within the steel matrix and on the fracture surfaces of the water atomised L-PBF alloys, featuring higher amounts of oxygen than the gas-atomised steels. Analyses on microstructure and hardness of the hardenable as-built steels suggested that during laser processing, the multilayer L-PBF structure undergoes an in-situ tempering treatment. Furthermore, the mechanical properties of the L-PBF steels could be widely tuned depending on the post-thermal treatment conditions.