Innovative design of 3D printed titanium alloy

A study led by scientists at the City University of Hong Kong has successfully developed a super-strong, highly malleable and ultra-light titanium-based alloy using 3D printing. Their findings open up a new way to design alloys with unprecedented structures and properties for a variety of structural applications.

Most people see 3D printing as a revolutionary technology that can produce complex shaped machine parts in one step. "However, we revealed its important potential for designing materials, rather than simply designing geometric shapes," said Dr Zhang. Earlier this year, he completed his doctorate at City University under the supervision of Professor Liu.

Metallurgists tend to regard the lack of uniformity in alloy composition as undesirable because it leads to undesirable properties such as brittleness. In additive manufacturing, how to eliminate the nonuniformity in rapid cooling process is one of the key problems. But Dr Zhang's previous modelling and simulation studies have found that a degree of inhomogeneity in components can actually produce unique inhomogeneous microstructures that improve the properties of alloys. So he tried to turn these simulations into reality using additive manufacturing.

"The unique properties of additive manufacturing provide us with greater freedom to design microstructures," explained Dr. Zhang, who is also the first author of the paper. "Specifically, we have developed a partial homogenization method to produce alloys with micron concentration gradients using 3D printing technology, which is not possible with any conventional material manufacturing method."