Effects of Built Direction and Deformation Temperature on the Grain Refinement of 3D Printed AlSi10Mg Alloy Processed by Equal Channel Angular Pressing (ECAP)

In this work, we used an AlSi10Mg alloy produced by selective laser melting (SLM) to study the effects of build direction and deformation temperature on the grain refinement process. Two different build orientations of 0° and 90° and deformation temperatures of 150 °C and 200 °C were selected to study this effect. Light microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction and transmission electron microscopy were used to investigate the microtexture and microstructural evolution of the laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) billets. Grain boundary maps showed that the proportion of low-angle grain boundaries (LAGBs) dominated in every analysed sample. It was also found that different thermal histories caused by the change in build direction resulted in microstructures with different grain sizes. In addition, EBSD maps revealed heterogeneous microstructures comprising equiaxed fine-grained zones with ≈0.6 μm grain size and coarse-grained zones with ≈10 μm grain size. From the detailed microstructural observations, it was found that the formation of a heterogeneous microstructure is closely related to the increased fraction of melt pool borders. The results presented in this article confirm that the build direction has a significant influence on the microstructure evolution during the ECAP process.