Achieving superior tensile and fatigue properties than conventional wrought state via hybrid additive-forging manufacturing
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Additively manufactured materials typically contain undesired defects and microstructures. These defects reduce material performance and limit the adoption of the technique in production environments. In this work, we report a hybrid manufacturing strategy that integrates additive manufacturing with hot forging to achieve exceptional mechanical properties in Ti-6Al-4V. The resulting material exhibits improved tensile and fatigue properties compared to its purely additively manufactured and conventionally wrought counterparts. The control of thermal history and plastic flow is capable of healing defects and tailoring microstructure. A series of combined forging and heat treatment processes were undertaken to reveal correlations between fabrication parameters and the resulting microstructures and mechanical response. The underlying mechanisms of microstructure evolution were investigated through systematic and integrated experimental characterization, finite element modelling and mechanical tests. A generic component, representative of an aero-engine blade, was fabricated using this technology, demonstrating the huge promise of adopting this technique in practical applications.
Date Issued
2026-02-01
Date Acceptance
2026-01-12
Citation
Materials & Design, 2026, 262
ISSN
0264-1275
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
Materials & Design
Volume
262
Copyright Statement
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
115485
Date Publish Online
2026-01-13