Selective laser melting additive manufacturing of advanced nuclear materials V-6Cr-6Ti

Abstract Selective laser melting (SLM) additive manufacturing technology has been a prevailing method to fabricate components with complex physical geometry or novel structural design. However, original nuclear powder material such as vanadium-based alloy appropriate for SLM processing has yet not been obtained commercially, which significantly restricts the development of nuclear component manufacturing. In this study, near-sphere, uniform and fine V-6Cr-6Ti pre-alloy powder which met the performance demands for SLM processing was successfully obtained by high-energy ball milling. Subsequently, the V-6Cr-6Ti part was fabricated by SLM consolidation of as-prepared pre-alloy powder with double-region orthometric scanning strategy, forming strong texture feature within molten pool. The compression test was performed, showing that the maximum compression stress reached 1078 MPa and the accumulated strain was about 0.32.