An experimental study of Ti-6Al-4V powder reactivity in gaseous environment: Application to additive manufacturing

Currently, one of the current issues related to the additive manufacturing is the change in the properties of Ti-6Al-4V powder during this process. This change has been attributed to the interaction of this powder with its gaseous environment that can contain a small quantity of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and/or water vapour. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study the effect of oxygen and nitrogen partial pressure as well as the effect of the temperature on the corrosion of the Ti-6Al-4V powder. The results show that the temperature and the oxygen partial pressure have an effect on the corrosion kinetics, which is not the case of nitrogen partial pressure. This study is a first step towards a better understanding of the ageing of Ti-6Al-4V powder during additive manufacturing processes.

Nitrogen Solubility in Liquid Ni-V, Ni-Ta, Ni-Cr-V, and Ni-Cr-Ta Alloys

An investigation has been made concerning the solubility of nitrogen in liquid binary alloys (Ni-V and Ni-Ta) and ternary alloys (Ni-Cr-V and Ni-Cr-Ta) by sampling method. The experiments were carried out in the temperature range from 1773 K to 1873 K and under the nitrogen partial pressure up to 1.0 bar. A technique involving induction melting and a rapid quench device has been used in this study. It has been found that Sieverts’ law successfully describes the nitrogen dissolution in all these liquid alloys up to 1.0 bar of nitrogen gas partial pressure. The additions of vanadium, tantalum and chromium significantly increase the nitrogen solubility, especially vanadium-alloying addition. Furthermore, we have determined the interaction parameters, enthalpies and entropies of nitrogen dissolution in these liquid alloys.