Assessing Additive Manufacturing Repeatability of Inherently Damped Nickel Alloy Components

Abstract

The repeatability of an additive manufacturing (AM) process that fabricates a unique specimen with inherent damping capability is explored. A laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) technique is used to additively manufacture nickel alloy components with the same geometry/dimensions. Key aspects to the manufacturing process such as scan strategy and build orientation are observed alongside damping performance. The results from forced-response testing show repeatable correlation between damping performance and modal response information. Furthermore, despite different scan strategies and build sequences, the results demonstrate that inherent damping repeatability is driven by the unique component geometry and has minimal sensitivity to manufacturing.