Speaker
Description
Additive Manufacturing (AM), both Laser Powder bed Fusion (LPBF) and Laser Blown Powder Directed Energy Deposition (LBP-DED) promise to produce unique, high quality components for aerospace to biomedical applications with unprecedented geometric complexity. However, the underlying physics controlling the melting, solidification, flow and other phenomena are still poorly understood. Many groups are modelling these processes, but experimental investigations are limited by the very high cooling rates (103 – 105 C/s), flow rates and interface velocies (m/s). Here, we present the need for ever faster and high flux real and reciprocal space imaging of microstructural feature formation and highly non-equilibrium phase changes. This is done using two unique in situ and operando LPBF and LBP-DED rigs that correlatively image the process using synchrotron X-ray, optical and infra-red imaging to capture the underlying phenomena that control AM. The benefits and limitations of the imaging modalities are discussed, together with the opportunities a hard XFEL could provide.
