Influences of postproduction heat treatment on Fe3Al-based iron aluminide fabricated using the wire-arc additive manufacturing process

In this paper, Fe3Al-based alloy with a designed 30 at% Al content is fabricated using an innovative wire-arc additive manufacturing process. In order to investigate the influences of postproduction heat treatments on the additively manufactured alloy, three postproduction heat treatment methods were applied to the as-fabricated material. The morphologies, phase constituents, and mechanical properties of samples produced by the different heat treatments were characterized and analyzed in detail. According to the results, the applied heat treatments can considerably change the microstructure and mechanical properties of the as-fabricated Fe3Al-based alloy. Also, the hardness and tensile properties of Fe3Al-based alloy are found relevant to the Al-rich precipitates observed in the morphologies, which are generated by the additional thermal processes on the homogenized Fe3Al-based alloy.