Tailored deformation behavior of 304L stainless steel through control of the crystallographic texture with Laser-Powder Bed Fusion

Laser-powder bed fusion (L-PBF) has gained significant research interest, not only for its profound advantage of producing near-net shape complex geometries of metallic parts, but also for the possibility of producing tailored microstructures. Recent observations have shown that by adjusting the process parameters it is possible to manipulate the crystallographic texture, through the control of the geometrical features of the melt pool. It is also known that the deformation behavior, namely the transformation induced plasticity or twinning induced plasticity effects, of austenitic stainless steels are dependent on the crystallographic texture. Based on the aforementioned observations, the deformation behavior of austenitic stainless steels processed by L-PBF can be tailored. By adjusting the laser power and the laser scanning speed, tailored crystallographic textures were obtained, along the uniaxial loading direction in 304L stainless steel samples produced by L-PBF. The possibility to engineer the crystallographic textures and thus the deformation behavior, in metastable stainless steels, is demonstrated by performing in situ neutron diffraction and uniaxial tension and compression tests. The influence of the initial and the evolving crystallographic texture on the deformation behavior is demonstrated and elaborated accordingly. The observed asymmetry in the deformation behavior between tension and compression is also discussed in detail.