Abstract

Optimal material properties of duplex stainless steels generally require near 50-50 ferrite-austenite microstructures. The development of additive manufacturing of duplex steels is hindered by difficulty in controlling cooling conditions to ensure a balanced phase ratio. In addition, non-uniform phase distribution is usually observed. Thus, sufficiently fast part scale process simulations are interesting to optimize process parameters to better predict and control the temperature history during fabrication and therefore solid-state phase transitions. Furthermore, stresses should also be taken into account in the optimization of the phase field in order to avoid cracking, buckling or excessive distortions. Numerical results obtained from a fast modeling of directed energy deposition including thermal analysis, diffusion of alloying element to account for phase transitions, and stress computation are analyzed. On this basis, we investigate the effect on stresses of an optimized fabrication strategy designed to target uniform and balanced ferrite-austenite ratio with respect to a reference printing strategy