The effects of building direction on the mechanical properties of Ti6Al4V parts manufactured by electron beam melting

In recent years, the additive manufacturing technology is used in many platforms like helicopters, airplanes, cars etc. The additive manufacturing technology has widespread advantages because of the low manufacturing costs and relatively short manufacturing time compared with the conventional manufacturing methods. The materials, the manufacturing technique and processes affect the material form that is used in proper platform. In the industrial sector, there are different additive manufacturing technologies such as Electron Beam Melting, Laser Beam Melting, Laser Metal Deposition, Laser Coating, and Additive Manufacturing. Among them, the manufacturing technique which uses powder bed technique like Electron Beam Melting technology is preferred in industry since the manufacturing technique is more suitable to produce parts having better surface quality, complicated geometric shaped products for the various designs. However, the additive manufacturing methods have some disadvantages such as the presence of the residual stresses and deformations of the end products. In this thesis, both the static and dynamic mechanical properties of Ti6Al4V parts that were produced in vertical and horizontal building directions by the electron beam melting method were carried out experimentally and the results were compared with the corresponding properties of Ti6Al4V parts produced by conventional methods. In order to investigate the mechanical properties; the surface roughness tests; tensile tests and the Split-Hopkinson high strain rate compression tests of the parts were carried out. The differences in the mechanical properties of the samples manufactured in different building directions were investigated and the effects of microstructure on these properties were studied by examining the internal microstructure texture with a microscope technology.