Tensile test and compressive test of selective laser melted stainless steel

Abstract

Selective laser melting (SLM) has gained popularity over the years due to its added advantages such as able to create high complexity parts with good mechanical properties. In this report, 316L austenitic stainless steel was fabricated through SLM and 3 wt. % micron-sized TiC particles are added to the 316L powder. Tensile and compressive test were carried out on the 316L-3TiC composites fabricated using different laser powers. It was observed from tensile test that the ultimate tensile strength (UTS) reached a high of 1032 MPa with a yield strength of 832 MPa. Compressive test revealed that the highest yield strength recorded was 802 MPa. From the stress-strain curves, it showed that for both tensile and compressive test, their yield strength is very close to each other for the various laser powers.