Rapid Solidification: Selective Laser Melting of AlSi10Mg

Rapid movement of the melt pool (at a speed around 1 m/s) in selective laser melting of metal powder directly implies rapid solidification. In this work, the length scale of the as-built microstructure of parts built with the alloy AlSi10Mg was measured and compared with the well-known relationship between cell size and cooling rate. Cooling rates during solidification were estimated using the Rosenthal equation. It was found that the solidification structure is the expected cellular combination of silicon with α-aluminum. The dependence of measured cell spacing on calculated cooling rate follows the well-established relationship for aluminum alloys. The implication is that cell spacing can be manipulated by changing the heat input. Microscopy of polished sections through particles of the metal powder used to build the parts showed that the particles have a dendritic-eutectic structure; the dendrite arm spacings in metal powder particles of different diameters were measured and also agree with literature correlations, showing the expected increase in secondary dendrite arm spacing with increasing particle diameter.