Fabrication of multi-element alloys by twin wire arc additive manufacturing combined with in-situ alloying

In this work, twin wire arc additive manufacturing (T-WAAM) combined with in-situ alloying method was developed to fabricate multi-element alloys, and biomedical Ti-6Al-7Nb alloy with a good combination of strength and ductility was successfully fabricated for the first time. The modification of microstructure and the improvement of mechanical properties of the deposited Ti-6Al-7Nb alloy caused by Nb addition were investigated. Although demonstrated here for Ti-6Al-7Nb alloy, the combined method of T-WAAM and in-situ alloying is in principle applicable to fabricate other multi-element alloys by composition design, which is conductive to expanding the application fields of WAAM. IMPACT STATEMENT Twin wire arc additive manufacturing combined with in-situ alloying was developed to fabricate multi-element alloys, and biomedical Ti-6Al-7Nb alloy with a good combination of strength and ductility was first fabricated.