The Effect of Fabrication Direction on the Mechanical Properties of Stainless Steel Parts Fabricated by Selective Laser Melting

This paper is focused on the study of the mechanical properties and manufacturing directions for a metallic parts fabricated by selective laser melting. To this end, micromechanical modeling and experimental analyzes are conducted to assess the effect of the scanning direction of the laser in fabricating stainless steel 316L coupons. The micromechanical-based modeling are implemented in a finite element model. In these models, melt pools boundaries are defined using cohesive surfaces. Each melt pool contains several grains with perfect boundaries. The mechanical properties of the coupon were verified through tensile tests on the fabricated coupons.