Particle Erosion Performance of Additive Manufactured 316L Stainless Steel Materials

Many critical parts such as surface parts of high-speed trains, bins and hoppers, and pipes, bends and valves in material transportation applications as well as a helicopter, mixer, and turbine blades, which can be exposed to particle wear due to the application environment, can be easily manufactured today due to the advances in 3D printing technology. For this reason, an experimental study was carried out to determine the particle erosion behavior of 316L stainless steel parts built by the laser melting method, which is one of the 3D printing technologies. The rectangular plate samples produced with various laser manufacturing parameters were subjected to particle erosion tests at different impingement angles in accordance with the ASTM G76 standard at 140 m/s impact speed. The results showed that the erosion behavior develops in a characteristic similar to the wrought sample, and laser parameters play an efficient role. For example, the porosity ratio decreases at low scanning speeds, resulting in significant improvements in erosion behavior. Also, it was found that the particle erosion behavior of the 3D printed parts could be improved in a serious amount by applying a heat treatment process. Consequently, the obtained results in this study promotes the more comprehensive works regarding the optimization of several laser manufacturing parameters such as scan speed, build direction, laser power, hatch spacing, layer thickness, scan strategy and laser exposure time to obtain the best particle erosion behavior and determination of the most suitable materials among the several others which can be used in 3D printing.