Comparison of the fatigue behavior of wrought and additively manufactured AISI 316L

Additive manufacturing (AM) is becoming increasingly important in engineering applications due to the possibility of producing components with a high geometrical complexity allowing for optimized forms with respect to the in-service functionality. Despite the promising potential, AM components are still far from being used in safety-relevant applications, mainly due to a lack of understanding of the feedstock-process-properties-performance relationship. This work aims at providing a full characterization of the fatigue behavior of the additively manufactured AISI 316L austenitic stainless steel and a direct comparison with the fatigue performance of the wrought steel. To this purpose, a set of specimens has been produced by laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) and subsequently heat treated at 900 °C for 1 hour for complete stress relief, whereas a second set of specimens has been machined out of hot-rolled plates. Low cycle fatigue (LCF) and high cycle fatigue (HCF) tests have been conducted for characterizing the fatigue behavior. The L-PBF material had a higher fatigue limit and better finite life performance compared to wrought material. Both, LCF and HCF-testing revealed an extensive cyclic softening.