Towards 3-D texture control in a β titanium alloy via laser powder bed fusion and its implications on mechanical properties

Fusion-based additive manufacturing (AM) offers a new opportunity to design metallic materials with complex, direction-dependent mechanical properties by controlling the orientation distribution of the constituent grains—also known as texture. Texture control may be achieved site-specifically by varying the processing variables and tailoring the local melt pool geometry and solidification kinetics. However, the type and direction of textures currently achievable in AM alloys are limited by the melt pool geometry itself. In this work, we advance the capabilities of controlling crystallographic texture in laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) by producing specimens of β titanium-niobium alloy with textures aligned along three different directions: the laser scan direction (SD), the build direction (BD), and—for the first time—the direction perpendicular to both BD and SD (i.e., PD). We achieve this three-dimensional (3-D) texture control by fine tuning the keyhole melt pool geometry and amount of overlap throughout the build. We test the tensile properties of the three different specimens along their respective texture axes and elucidate the relationships between crystallographic orientation, mesostructure, and mechanical behavior. We find that the novel PD texture exhibits the best combination of strength, strain hardenability, and ductility. We ascribe these results to the unique mesostructure of this specimen. This work opens new opportunities for designing novel materials with directional properties by achieving three-dimensional (3-D) texture control during fusion-based AM.