On the in situ elimination of pores during laser powder bed fusion of a titanium alloy

Abstract

\n The printing quality of the laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) components largely depends on the presence of various defects such as massive porosity. Thus, the efficient elimination of pores is an important factor to the production of a sound LPBF product. In this work, the efficacy of two in situ laser remelting approaches on the elimination of pores during LPBF of a titanium alloy Ti-6.5Al-3.5Mo-l.5Zr-0.3Si (TC11) were assessed using both experimental and computational methods. These two remelting methods are the surface remelting, and the layer-by-layer printing and remelting. A multi-track and multi-layer phenomenological model was established to compute the evolution of pores with the temperature and velocity fields. The results showed that surface remelting with a high laser power such as 180 W laser can effectively eliminate pores within three deposited layers. However, such a remelting cannot reach defects in deeper regions. Alternatively, the layer-by-layer remelting with a laser power of 180 W can effectively eliminate the pores formed in the previous layer in real time. The results obtained from this work can provide useful guidance for the in situ control of printing defects supported by the real time monitoring, feedback and operation systems of the intelligent LPBF equipment.