Alloy design of superalloy for additive manufacturing

Jinghao Xu is a PhD student at the Division of Engineering Materials, Department of Management and Engineering, since September 2018. Jinghao’s research topic is aiming at proposing new chemical composition of superalloy for additive manufacturing (also known as 3D printing), with excellent high-temperature mechanical properties and oxidation resistance

In the past two decades, metallic additive manufacturing has been flourishingly developed as a disruptive manufacturing process for providing sophisticated geometry of the component, owing to its layer-by-layer building manner. The metallic 3D printing technique offers great advantages to manufacturing efficiency and design flexibility.

However, only a few alloys are available in the materials portfolio for metallic 3D printing, which apparently impeded further applications. Nickel-based superalloys are widely used in the critical component service at the elevated temperature, owing to its extraordinary combination of heat-resistant mechanical and chemical properties. Driven by the more and more demanding working environment, the advanced designed superalloy parts are of great interest and significance. For example, the turbine components with complex hollow internal cooling systems are well expected to be fabricated with 3D printing. While what hinders the implementation of this technique on superalloy is the high cracking susceptibility during processing, especially for precipitation strengthened nickel-based superalloy.

In Jinghao’s research, the alloy design approaches based on physics-based additive manufacturability model, PHAse COMPutation (PHACOMP), and CALculation of PHAse Diagrams (CALPHAD) methods will be carried out for the alloy selection from almost 1,000,000 candidates. Beyond, the new alloy will be 3D printed and examined by both advanced microstructure characterization and mechanical properties evaluation.

 

an graphic abstract of several microstructure pictures took in the engineering materials lab with instruments.MAD542, a novel nickel-based superalloy for additive manufacturing Photo credit Jinghao Xu

Research

Main research interests:

  • Alloy design.
  • Microstructure chracterization.
  • High-temperature mechanical testing.
  • Oxidation testing.

Jinghao’s research is primarily within the scope of MADAM (an VINNOVA (Sweden's Innovation Agency) funded) project, in which he works closely with the project partners including Chalmers University of Technology, Siemens Energy AB, Höganäs AB, Quintus Technologies AB, and EOS Finland Oy. More information can be found on project page bellow.

Jinghao’s research is also within the scope of CAM2, a Swedish competence centre for additive manufacturing of metals.

Publications

2023

2022

Teaching

  • TMPM09, ‘Project Course Advanced - Engineering Materials’, Project supervision.
  • TMKM14, ‘Industrial Material Selection’, Tutorial session and project supervision.
  • TMKM90, ‘Engineering Materials - Deformation and Fracture’, Tutorial session and laboratory guidance.
  • TMKM09, ‘Engineering Materials for Lightweight Applications’, Laboratory guidance.
  • TMMI18, ‘Engineering Materials’, Laboratory guidance.
  • TMKM12, ‘Engineering Materials Metals’, Laboratory guidance.

Short facts

Co-workers at the division Engineering Materials

Organisation