EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

This paper introduces a family of novel aluminium alloys, two ternary and two quaternary alloys. The alloys have been designed in a way to utilise the unique processing conditions provided by rapid solidification and re-melting which occurs during additive manufacturing using laser powder bed fusion process. These alloying design principle follows simple solidification calculations using ThermoCalc© software. This has enabled a straightforward path to avoid solidification cracking completely. The basis for designing such alloys is to develop aluminium alloys containing higher amount of solutes in the solid solution, which can be later employed to achieve high strength via solid solution strengthening integrated with secondary precipitate strengthening. These alloys are expected to be suitable for high temperature applications, as it is shown that they are resistant to hardening up to 523 K in as-printed condition. The microhardness results showed that upon ageing at 678 K, the maximum hardness goes from 105 HV in as-printed condition up to 130 HV in peak aged condition.