Examining the inherent strains of aluminium alloy 7050-T7451 powder for additive manufacturing processes

Abstract

Aluminium alloys (AA) are ubiquitous materials in manufacturing used in powder bed fusion (PBF) processes due to light weight, high strength and corrosion resistance. Current research focuses on other materials whilst additively manufactured AA 7050 remains unexplored. This paper examines the formability of AA 7050-T7451 powder for the Selective Laser Melting (SLM) process. To define this material in Simufact AdditiveTM the creep behaviour required flow curves obtained by writing a MATLAB® script to calculate the true stress–strain behaviour depending on strain rate and temperature. The results of the mechanical calibration for aluminium alloy are presented to obtain its inherent strains. Graphical abstract