Tensile Properties of 21-6-9 Austenitic Stainless Steel Built Using Laser Powder-Bed Fusion

Alloy 21-6-9 is an austenitic stainless steel with high strength, thermal stability at high temperatures, and retained toughness at cryogenic temperatures. This type of steel has been used for aerospace applications for decades, using traditional manufacturing processes. However, limited research has been conducted on this alloy manufactured using laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF). Therefore, in this work, a design of experiment (DOE) was performed to obtain optimized process parameters with regard to low porosity. Once the optimized parameters were established, horizontal and vertical blanks were built to investigate the mechanical properties and potential anisotropic behavior. As this alloy is exposed to elevated temperatures in industrial applications, the effect of elevated temperatures (room temperature and 750 °C) on the tensile properties was investigated. In this work, it was shown that alloy 21-6-9 could be built successfully using LPBF, with good properties and a density of 99.7%, having an ultimate tensile strength of 825 MPa, with an elongation of 41%, and without any significant anisotropic behavior.