Processing of tungsten through electron beam melting *

Additive manufacturing (AM) presents a new design paradigm for the manufacture of engineering ma-terials through the layer-by-layer approach combined with welding theory. In the instance of difficult to process materials such as tungsten and other refractory metals, AM offers an opportunity for radical redesign of critical components for next-generation energy technologies including fusion. In this work, electron beam powder bed fusion (EB-PBF) is applied to process pure tungsten to study the influence of process parameters on the defect density of the material. An in-situ image analysis algorithm is applied to pure tungsten for the first time, and is used to visualize the defect structure in AM tungsten. Finally, a cracking mechanism for AM tungsten is proposed, and suggestions for suppression of cracks in pure tungsten are offered. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Automated summary

Additive manufacturing (AM) offers a new design paradigm for engineering materials, especially for difficult to process materials like tungsten. By using electron beam powder bed fusion (EB-PBF) technology, the influence of process parameters on defect density in pure tungsten was studied, and a cracking mechanism for tungsten and suggestions for suppression of cracks were proposed.