A team of engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reports a simple and inexpensive method to prepare ceramic nanofiber-reinforced Inconel 718 material for use in metal PBF additive manufacturing processes. The research team believes that their method of strengthening 3D printed metal powders with ceramic nanowires could also be used to improve many other materials. Key materials for many important applications in aerospace and energy production must be able to withstand extreme conditions such as high temperature and tensile stress without failure. Therefore, this new strengthened superalloy developed by MIT has a wide range of applications in demanding fields such as aerospace prospect.
"Developing materials that are more suitable for extreme environments is always an urgent need for us, and we believe this approach has implications for other materials in the future," said Ju Li, Battelle Energy Alliance Professor of Nuclear Engineering and professor in MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). huge potential."
The research was published in the April 5 issue of Additive Manufacturing in a paper titled "Strengthening additively manufactured Inconel 718 through in-situ formation of nanocarbides and silicides," by Li of the Materials Research Laboratory (MRL). He is one of the three corresponding authors of the paper. The other two corresponding authors are Professor Chen Wen from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Professor A. John Hart from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221486042300091X?via%3Dihub=
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△Summary of paper pictures
The paper's co-first authors are postdocs Emre Tekoğlu and Alexander O'Brien of MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE); Alexander D. O'Brien, an NSE graduate student; and Liu of UMass Amherst. healthy. The other authors are Baoming Wang, a DMSE postdoc at MIT; Sina Kavak of Istanbul Technical University; MRL researcher Yong Zhang; DMSE graduate student So Yeon Kim; NSE graduate student Wang Shitong; and Duygu Agaogullari of Istanbul Technical University. This research was supported by Eni SpA through the MIT Energy Initiative, the National Science Foundation and ARPA-E.
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△The co-first authors of the research paper are (from left to right): Jian Liu of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Emre Tekoğlu and Alexander O'Brien of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
better performance
The research team's method is based on Inconel 718 material, a popular "superalloy" used in additive manufacturing applications that need to withstand extreme conditions such as 700 degrees Celsius (about 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit). The team writes that they ground commercial Inconel 718 powder with a small amount of ceramic nanofibers, resulting in a uniform coating of the nanoceramics on the surface of the Inconel particles.
The resulting powder is then used to make parts by laser powder bed fusion. The researchers found that parts made with the new powder had significantly less porosity and cracks than parts made with Inconel718 alone. And this, in turn, leads to greatly increased strength of the parts, which offer many other advantages as well. For example, they are more ductile, or stretchable, and have better resistance to radiation and high-temperature loads.
"Also, the strengthening process itself is inexpensive and works with existing 3D printers. Just use our powder and you'll get better performance," Li said.
Xu Song, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who was not involved in this work, commented: "In this paper, the authors propose a new method for printing nickel-based alloy 718 metal matrix composites reinforced by ceramic nanofibers. The laser melting process induces The in-situ dissolution of the ceramic enhances the heat resistance and strength of Inconel718. In addition, the in-situ strengthening reduces the grain size and eliminates defects. The 3D printing of future metal alloys, including the modification of high-reflectivity copper and the superalloy Fracture inhibition, all could clearly benefit from this technology."
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△A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reports a simple and inexpensive method to prepare key reinforcement materials for aerospace and nuclear power generation applications. The "beaver" and other shapes on the printed substrate in this photo were created using new technology. Photo credit: Alexander O'Brien
huge new space
Prof. Li said: "This work could open up a huge new space for alloy design, because ultrathin 3D printed metal alloy layers can be cooled much faster than bulk components made using conventional melt solidification processes. Therefore, Many of the chemical compositional rules that apply to casting don't seem to apply to this kind of 3D printing. So we have a much larger compositional space to explore adding base metals to ceramics."
Emre Tekoğlu, one of the lead authors of the research paper, added: "This composition is one of the first that we have designed, so it is very exciting to achieve these results in real life. There is still a lot of room for exploration. We will continue to explore The new Inconel composite formulation has finally led to the development of materials that can withstand more extreme environments."
Another lead author, Alexander O'Brien, concludes: "The precision and scalability enabled by 3D printing opens up new worlds of possibilities for materials design. Our results here are an exciting early step in a process that Sure to have a major impact on the design of future nuclear, aerospace and all energy production.
