Measuring the thermophysical properties of materials at high temperature - Application to the additive manufacturing of alloy Ti-6Al-4V and of stainless steel 316L

In view of optimising the microstructures of metallic materials and obtaining the desired properties, the accurate characterisation of the thermophysical behaviour of these materials has long been considered of paramount importance e.g. by allowing for the in-situ study of phase transformations, by providing data for numerical simulations and, essentially, by contributing to a better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms at play during processing.
In the present work, the thermophysical behaviour of Ti-alloy Ti-6Al-4V and of stainless steel 316L has been characterised in details, in order to reach a better understanding of the phenomena controlling the microstructures and mechanical properties of parts made by additive manufacturing techniques that appear nowadays very promising in view of the economic production of near-net-shape, complex and (almost) fully dense parts from metallic materials. In particular, the thermal conductivity of Ti-alloy Ti-6Al-4V and of stainless steel 316L at high temperature has been determined by combining dilatometry, Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and laser flash diffusivimetry based on Laplace’s equation : k(T)=α(T)ρ(T)Cp(T)

where
k(T) is the thermal conductivity (W/m*K)
α(T) is the thermal diffusivity (mm2/s)
ρ(T) is the specific mass (g/cm3)
Cp(T) is the specific heat capacity (J/g*K).
Since Ti-alloy Ti-6Al-4V and stainless steel 316L exhibit quite different physical behaviours, their careful comparison is shown to shed more light into the role of phenomena such as epitaxial growth, out-of-equilibrium phase transformations and/or internal stresses in the additive manufacturing of metallic materials.