Comparison on mechanical anisotropies of selective laser melted Ti-6Al-4V alloy and 304 stainless steel

Near-fully dense Ti-6Al-4V and 304 stainless steel samples have been produced applying selective laser melting (SLM) in the present work. The microstructures, textures and microhardnesses on horizontal and vertical cross sections, as well as the tensile properties of horizontally and vertically SLMed samples are investigated. It is found that the microstructures of the two SLMed alloys are mainly composed of hexagonal close-packed (HCP) martensitic phase or face-centered cubic (FCC) austenitic phase within columnar structures in Ti-6Al-4V alloy and 304 stainless steel, respectively. For both SLMed alloys, the tensile properties and microhardnesses show anisotropic though the textures are weak. Especially, the Ti-6Al-4V samples show even stronger anisotropic mechanical properties compared with 304 stainless steel. The higher length-width ratios of the columnar structures, rather than the weaker textures or the less symmetry of HCP crystal structure in SLMed Ti-6Al-4V are believed to be responsible for the stronger mechanical anisotropies. As expected, heat treatment is an effective method to eliminate columnar structures and leads to nearly isotropic mechanical properties.