Effect of scanning strategy on the thermo-structural coupling field and cracking behavior during laser powder bed fusion of Ti48Al2Cr2Nb alloys

Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is characterized by complicated non-equilibrium processing characteristics, involving extremely high temperature gradient and cooling rate within the mesoscopic dynamic molten pool, which brings great challenges to the forming of metal materials with high crack sensitivity (such as γ-TiAl alloy). In this paper, based on the LPBF forming process of Ti48Al2Cr2Nb alloy, a corresponding multi-track and multi-layer thermal-structure sequential coupled finite element model was constructed, and the influence of four different scanning strategies on the temperature and stress evolution behavior in the powder bed forming region was quantitatively studied, and the crack initiation criterion was also established according to the relationship between nodal flow stress and equivalent stress. It was found that island scanning strategy could induce the higher molten pool temperature and attendant larger molten pool size compared with the non-island linear scanning strategy. Besides, island scanning strategy was conducive to relieving the thermal stress inside the division region but also inducing the stress concentration in the sub-island overlap region. Specially, the strip island scanning strategy exhibited the lowest residual stress and most homogeneous stress distribution. By the experimental measurements, the strip island scanning strategy contributed to the lowest crack density of 0.33 mm/mm.