Acoustic emission monitoring of crack propagation in additively manufactured and conventional titanium components

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a novel and innovative production technology that can produce complex and lightweight engineering products. In AM components, as in all engineering materials, fatigue is considered as one of the principle causes of unexpected failure. In order to detect, localise and characterise cracks in various material components and metals, acoustic emission (AE) is used as a non-destructive monitoring technique. One of the main advantages of AE is that it can be also used for dynamic damage characterisation and specifically for crack propagation monitoring. In this research, we use AE to monitor the fatigue crack growth behaviour of Ti6Al4V components under four-point bending. The samples were produced by means of AM as well as conventional material. Notched and unnotched specimens were investigated with respect to the crack severity and crack detection using AE. The main AE signal parameters -such as cumulative events, hits, duration, average frequency and rise time- were evaluated and indicate sensitivity to damage propagation in order to lead to a warning against the final fracture occurrence. This is the first time that AE is applied in AM components under fatigue.