Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3D printing, offers great design flexibility for manufacturing components with complex geometries, and has attracted significant interest in the aero and energy industries in the past decades. Among the commercial AM processes, selective laser melting (SLM) and electron beam melting (EBM) are the two most widely used ones for metallic materials. Inconel 718 (IN718) is a nickel-base superalloy and has impressive combination of good mechanical properties, weldability and low cost. Due to its excellent weldability, IN718 has been intensively applied in the AM filed, to gain more understanding of the AM processes and fully realize AM’s potentials.

The study objects in the present thesis include both EBM and SLM IN718. The solidification conditions in EBM and SLM are very different and are different to that of conventional cast, leading to unique microstructures mechanical properties. Therefore, this thesis aims to gain better understanding of the microstructures and anisotropic mechanical behaviours of both EBM and SLM IN718, by detailed characterizations and by comparisons with the forged counterpart.

The as-built microstructure of EBM IN718 is spatially dependent: the periphery (contour) region has a mixture of equiaxed and columnar grains, while the bulk (hatch) region has columnar grains elongated along the building direction; the last solidified region close to the top sample surface shows segregation and Laves phases, otherwise the rest of the whole sample is well homogenized. Differently, the as-built microstructure of SLM IN718 is spatially homogeneous: the grains is rather equiaxed and with subgrain cell structures. These microstructures also respond differently to the standard heat treatment routines for the conventional counterparts.

Anisotropic mechanical properties are evident in the room temperature tensile tests and high temperature dwell-fatigue tests. The anisotropic tensile properties of EBM IN718 at room temperature are more likely due to the directional alignment of porosities along the building direction rather than the strong crysiii tallographic texture of ⟨100⟩ _ building direction. While for SLM IN718, the anisotropy is more likely attributed to the different extents of ‘work-hardening’ or dislocations accumulated between the horizontally and vertically built specimens. The anisotropy mechanisms in dwell-fatigue crack propagations at 550 ◦C for EBM and SLM IN718 are identical: higher effective stress intensity factor when intergranular cracking path is perpendicular to the loading direction, but lower effective stress intensity factor when intergranular cracking path is parallel to or slightly deviated from the loading direction.

The 2160s dwell-fatigue cracking behaviours at 550 ◦C are of significant interest for AM IN718, of which test condition is similar to that of real service for IN718 disk in turbine engine. Generally, after conventional or short-term heat treatments, EBM IN718 shows better dwell-fatigue cracking resistance than SLM IN718. The damage mechanism is different for EBM and SLM IN718: the intergranular cracking in EBM IN718 is due to environmentally assisted grain boundary attack, while creep damage is active for SLM IN718. The considerably ‘deformed’ microstructure, specifically the subgrain cell structures in SLM IN718 resulted from the manufacturing process, is believed to activate creep damage even at a low temperature of 550 ◦C. And for SLM IN718, heat treatment routine must be carefully established to alter the ‘deformed’ microstructure for better time dependent cracking resistance at elevated temperature.