Cracking Behavior in Additively Manufactured Pure Tungsten

In this study, near fully dense (96.5%) pure tungsten bulks were additively manufactured and the cracking behavior was investigated. A crack network with a spacing of ~ 100 μm was observed in the fabricated bulks. It was observed that the laser scanning strategy, which could tailor the microstructure, affected the crack distribution pattern in fabricated tungsten. The calculated surface temperature difference (7300 K) was much higher than the cracking criterion (800 K) of tungsten, indicating that cracking is almost inevitable in laser additive manufacturing of tungsten. It could be concluded that crack network formed because the cracks emerged in every laser molten track and then interconnected in the layer-by-layer building process.