Correlations Between Powder Feedstock Quality, In Situ Porosity Detection, and Fatigue Behavior of Ti-6Al-4V Fabricated by Powder Bed Electron Beam Melting: A Step Towards Qualification

Ti-6Al-4V is the most studied alloy via electron beam melting (EBM) with regards to microstructure and mechanical behavior, but there have been no attempts to correlate in situ porosity detection and fatigue behavior. This is required for widespread adoption of EBM because conventional evaluation is often time-consuming and expensive. This paper presents the use of near-infrared imaging to detect and quantify porosity in Ti-6Al-4V builds fabricated from different powder feedstocks and its correlation to their fatigue response. We report that, for identical processing parameters, the variability in powder feedstock causes variations in porosity and scatter in the respective fatigue response.