Defect evolution during high temperature tension-tension fatigue of SLM AISi10Mg alloy by synchrotron tomography

Lack of fusion defects and porosity are inevitable characteristics of additive manufacturing and these are expected to play a key role in determining fatigue life and fatigue failure when excluding the influence of inhomogeneous microstructures. This work followed damage accumulation under tension-tension cyclic loading at 250 °C in situ by time-lapse synchrotron radiation X-ray micro-computed tomography (SR-μCT) for AlSi10Mg test-pieces, produced by selective laser melting (SLM) over their complete fatigue lives (ranging from 180 to 38,000 cycles). These samples were found to accumulate widespread plastic strain each cycle in common with ultra-low cycle fatigue (UCLF) at low levels of triaxial constraint. The defects were found to elongate plastically at a rate approximately 10 times larger than their growth rate laterally. This elongation behaviour at room and elevated temperature fatigue is proportional to the accumulated longitudinal strain increment each cycle. Rotation under the influence of shear is also observed for those defects close to the surface of samples. Some defect coalescence was observed, but final failure was found to be associated with the nucleation of a high density of secondary microvoids (occurring at eutectic Si platelets) that form just prior to failure and link up by microvoid coalescence. These steps may take up approximate 90% of the fatigue life. The final stage of cyclic plasticity occurs when the longitudinal strain exceeds ∼0.9. Our results are in line with previous models of strain accumulation and defect growth under ULCF conditions