Experimental Investigation and Numerical Simulation of Residual Stress and Distortion of Ti6Al4V Components Manufactured Using Selective Laser Melting

Residual stress and distortion are inevitable during metal selective laser melting (SLM) process due to the high thermal gradient. Based on an experimental investigation and a numerical simulation, this paper studied the effect of geometric size and structural feature on the residual stress and distortion of hollow Ti-alloy blades fabricated using SLM. The results indicated that the distortion of blades increased with the increase in height and torsion angle of the blades. However, distortion obviously decreased when the stiffened plates were set inside the blades and the blade thickness increased. When the number of stiffened plates increased from zero to three and the blade thickness increased from 0.5 to 2 mm, the distortion value was reduced by the biggest rate of 38 and 35%, respectively. In addition, the residual stress along the building direction was found to play a dominant role in inducing the distortion. This study showed a new viewpoint to reduce the distortion by optimizing the geometric size and structural feature of a metal part.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the effects of geometric size and structural feature on residual stress and distortion in selective laser melting (SLM) of hollow Ti-alloy blades. By conducting experiments and numerical simulations, it is found that blade distortion increases with height and torsion angle, but decreases when stiffened plates are introduced and blade thickness is increased. The study also reveals that residual stress in the building direction plays a dominant role in inducing distortion. The findings provide a new perspective on reducing distortion by optimizing geometric size and structural feature.