2021 journal article

Processing of tungsten through electron beam melting *

JOURNAL OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS, 555.

By: E. Ellis *, M. Sprayberry *, C. Ledford *, J. Hankwitz n, M. Kirka*, C. Rock n , T. Horn n , Y. Katoh *, R. Dehoff*

author keywords: Additive manufacturing; Pure tungsten; Electron beam melting; Refractory metal
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
7. Affordable and Clean Energy (OpenAlex)
Source: Web Of Science
Added: August 30, 2021

Additive manufacturing (AM) presents a new design paradigm for the manufacture of engineering materials through the layer-by-layer approach combined with welding theory. In the instance of difficult to process materials such as tungsten and other refractory metals, AM offers an opportunity for radical redesign of critical components for next-generation energy technologies including fusion. In this work, electron beam powder bed fusion (EB-PBF) is applied to process pure tungsten to study the influence of process parameters on the defect density of the material. An in-situ image analysis algorithm is applied to pure tungsten for the first time, and is used to visualize the defect structure in AM tungsten. Finally, a cracking mechanism for AM tungsten is proposed, and suggestions for suppression of cracks in pure tungsten are offered.