Texture‐based residual stress analysis of laser powder bed fused Inconel 718 parts

Although layer‐based additive manufacturing methods such as laser powder bed fusion (PBF‐LB) offer an immense geometrical freedom in design, they are typically subject to a build‐up of internal stress (i.e. thermal stress) during manufacturing. As a consequence, significant residual stress (RS) is retained in the final part as a footprint of these internal stresses. Furthermore, localized melting and solidification inherently induce columnar‐type grain growth accompanied by crystallographic texture. Although diffraction‐based methods are commonly used to determine the RS distribution in PBF‐LB parts, such features pose metrological challenges in their application. In theory, preferred grain orientation invalidates the hypothesis of isotropic material behavior underlying the common methods to determine RS. In this work, more refined methods are employed to determine RS in PBF‐LB/M/IN718 prisms, based on crystallographic texture data. In fact, the employment of direction‐dependent elastic constants (i.e. stress factors) for the calculation of RS results in insignificant differences from conventional approaches based on the hypothesis of isotropic mechanical properties. It can be concluded that this result is directly linked to the fact that the {311} lattice planes typically used for RS analysis in nickel‐based alloys have high multiplicity and less strong texture intensities compared with other lattice planes. It is also found that the length of the laser scan vectors determines the surface RS distribution in prisms prior to their removal from the baseplate. On removal from the baseplate the surface RS considerably relaxes and/or redistributes; a combination of the geometry and the scanning strategy dictates the sub‐surface RS distribution. In this article, a texture‐based characterization of surface, sub‐surface and bulk residual stress in laser powder bed fused Inconel 718 alloy is carried out. It is shown that, in the case of this nickel‐based superalloy, the texture affects the residual stress determination only when it has sufficient strength.