Detecting void-induced scatter of fatigue life of selective laser melting-fabricated inconel 718 using miniature specimens

Abstract

In order to detect the uncertainty of fatigue properties of additive manufacturing-fabricated Inconel 718 parts, by using miniature specimens, we statistically reveal void-induced fatigue data scatter. We found that the voids located at the specimen surface and/or near the surface not only reduced fatigue strength but also increased the degree of the fatigue data scatter, while such a trend could be lessened by the proper heat treatment. We expect that the miniature specimen testing method could effectively sample the voids with different distribution features, and thus quantitatively detect such defect-dominated uncertainty of fatigue properties of the additive manufacturing-fabricated parts.