FUNCTIONALLY GRADED MATERIAL BY ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Functionally graded material (FGM) is a new generation of engineered material with changes in the properties of material by varying structural design or material composition. The fabrication of FGM by conventional techniques mostly offer control in varying composition and hardly offer control in varying structural design. The flexibility of structural design provided by additive manufacturing such as selective laser melting (SLM) makes it an outstanding technique to fabricate FGM. In this research, an overview of FGM fabrication techniques was presented covering both conventional techniques and various additive manufacturing techniques. On the other hand, fabrication of a FGM with varying structural design was demonstrated using SLM technique and titanium alloy as material. The structural design fabricated by SLM was periodic cellular structures with cubic unit. To obtain FGM, the structure was varied by change in strut thickness continuously and linearly in single direction. Results showed that the complex design was successfully fabricated by SLM and achieved nearly full-dense strut for the fabricated part.