Sliding wear and induced-microstructure of Ti-6Al-4V alloys: Effect of additive laser technology

Comparison study on the sliding wear behavior and microstructural evolution of Ti6Al4V, which were prepared using forging, laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) and laser directed energy deposition (L-DED), was carried out. Both L-PBF and L-DED samples exhibit nonequilibrium feature with lath/acicular α-Ti, due to the high cooling rate. Considering the hardness from multi-scales: the micro-hardness of L-DED sample shows the highest value (400 HV0.5). But, from the nano-scale, the wrought one is harder (about 4.7 GPa) than the other two samples. The wrought sample presents lower wear rate (3.78 × 10⁻⁵ g/ (N × m)) than that of L-DED and L-PBF processed Ti6Al4V. L-PBF processed sample possesses smaller surface plastic deformation zoom than that of L-DED and wrought samples from the cross-sectional analyses.