Laser Additive Manufacturing of Strong and Ductile Al-12Si Alloy under Static Magnetic Field

Rapid cooling and solidification during laser additive manufacturing(LAM)can produce ultra-fine mi-crostructure with higher strength.However,the non-uniform cell/grain structure can easily result in early stress concentration and fracture during deformation,which remains a major challenge for the LAM field.Using Al-12Si as the model alloy,we employed the external static magnetic field(SMF)to modu-late the laser powder bed fusion process(L-PBF),demonstrating a uniform microstructure with a refined cell structure.The mechanical properties show that the SMF can produce a combination of high tensile strength of 451.4±0.5 MPa and large uniform elongation of 10.4％±0.79％,which are superior to those of previously-reported Al-Si alloys with post-treatment or element alloying.The mechanism analysis based on multi-scale simulation reveals the determining role of SMF in rapid solidification,and this method is applicable to the microstructure control of other metallic materials during LAM.