Tensile And Ductile Fracture Properties Of As-Printed 316l Stainless Steel Thin Walls Obtained By Directed Energy Deposition

Mechanical properties of as-printed 316L stainless steel thin-walled structures obtained by directed energy deposition are investigated. In-situ tensile and fracture tests are performed on small samples obtained from a additively manufactured square section tube and extracted with three different orientations with respect to the part build direction. Despite a strongly oriented microstructure resulting from the process, as-printed specimens exhibit a reduced anisotropy in comparison with thick or polished samples commonly reported in the literature. Moreover, it is shown using a simple model that the reduced dentified anisotropy can be explained by considering the material thickness variation pattern only, resulting from the layer stacking process. Fracture tests are analyzed using an adapted digital image correlation procedure that evaluates the specimen fracture toughness from experimentally computed J-integrals. Using time reversal, strain fields in regions close to the crack path are identified. Stress fields are then computed from the constitutive behavior identified in tensile tests. A regularization procedure is proposed to enforce the stress equilibrium. Finally, the J-integral is computed using various integration contours in order to validate its path-independance. On this basis, a nearly isotropic fracture toughness is identified. Additional scanning electron microscope observations show that fracture surface features are independent from specimen orientation. This apparent isotropy is explained by the isotropic distribution of lack-of-fusion defects driving crack initiation and propagation.