Fatigue and Fracture Assessment of Additive Manufactured Metallic Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Additive manufacturing technology is increasingly demonstrating significant potential in the field of material processing. Unlike traditional casting or forging materials, additive manufacturing metallic materials and alloys exhibit unique behavior in terms of fatigue and fracture properties. During the additive manufacturing process, alloy materials undergo special thermal cycling, resulting in microstructures with distinctive characteristics such as grain refinement, anisotropy, residual stress, and microscopic cracks. While grain refinement helps to enhance the strength and toughness of the alloy, it may also increase the alloy’s susceptibility to crack initiation. Additionally, residual stress can accelerate fatigue crack propagation. Furthermore, defects such as pores, cracks, unfused regions, and surface roughness in additive manufacturing alloys can easily lead to fatigue crack initiation and propagation, ultimately leading to fracture failure that significantly impacts the fatigue life of the alloy. Therefore, optimizing process parameters and post-processing strategies for additive manufacturing and reducing or eliminating defects are crucial for improving the fatigue properties of additive manufacturing alloys. Moreover, various theoretical models and numerical simulation methods have been developed to elucidate crack initiation and propagation mechanisms under fatigue load conditions for these alloys, as well as predict their fatigue lives and fracture strengths.

We are pleased to invite you to submit papers on the following areas:

1. The influence mechanism of the microstructures of additive manufacturing alloys on fatigue fracture properties;
2. Establishing more accurate and reliable fracture fatigue prediction models;
3. Optimizing additive manufacturing process parameters and post-processing strategies;
4. Developing new high-performance additive manufacturing anti-fatigue materials;
5. Exploring the performance and durability of additive manufacturing alloys in extreme environments. Research on these topics is of great significance to promote the application of additive technology and materials in key industrial fields such as transportation and energy.

In this Special Issue, we welcome articles that focus on the effects of microstructures on the fatigue properties and lifetimes of additive manufacturing metals or metal matrix composites, the behavior and mechanisms of fatigue crack initiation and propagation, and fatigue performance prediction models. The anti-fatigue manufacturing process of additive manufacturing alloys is particularly noteworthy, making it of great significance for obtaining high-performance additive manufacturing products.

Prof. Dr. Rui Hu
Dr. Xian Luo
Guest Editors

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• additive manufacturing
• fatigue
• fracture
• metallic materials
• prediction models
• crack