Recent Advances in Alloy Development for Metal Additive Manufacturing in Gas Turbine/Aerospace Applications: A Review

Abstract

A dozen or so alloys have been occupying the alloy landscape in metal additive manufacturing (MAM) in terms of addressing all
aspects of research, aiding the maturity of development of these alloys
towards various qualifed applications for the aerospace/gas turbine
sector, in the last decade or so. These include, AlSi10Mg, Al7Si0.5 Mg
(F357), AlMgSc, Ti6Al4V, γ-TiAl, CoCrMo, Stellite12, IN718, IN625,
CM247LC, HastelloyX, SS316L, CuCrNb, CuCrZr, to name a few. There
has been a tremendous interest in the design and development of novel
high temperature materials for MAM, with isotropic microstructure and
high defect tolerance, to facilitate accelerated adoption of this technology to the aerospace sector. These include developing diffcult to weld
chemistries, alloys prone to cracking, alloys with improved high temperature properties, composite materials and creating novel alloys that are otherwise not achievable via conventional manufacturing. This article
comprises a review of some of the innovations in alloy development that
have been explored in recent times, comprising Aluminum, Titanium,
Nickel, Cobalt, Copper, and others, with relevance to the gas turbine/
aerospace arena. This includes over 100 different alloys that have been
studied via laser powder bed fusion, direct energy deposition, binder jet
technology, along with some novel methods of manufacturing new materials via MAM, to give a favour for the importance that this subject has
garnished in the scientifc community in recent times