My doctoral research involves the investigation of the influence of process-induced defects and the surface condition on the fatigue behaviour of additive-manufactured (AM) metals. This involves performing uniaxial fatigue tests and characterisation of different defects by fractography to identify crack initiation and propagation under different surface conditions.
The research contributes to predicting the allowable defect size for a particular application under a specific loading condition. The overall aim of the project is to establish guidelines for tolerating an acceptable defect size in AM products for fatigue-critical applications, thereby reducing the risk of early catastrophic failures due to fatigue.
