High Throughput Assays for Additively Manufactured Ti-Ni Alloys Based on Compositional Gradients and Spherical Indentation

Recent advances in additive manufacturing (AM) reveal an exciting opportunity to build materials with novel internal structures combined with intricate part geometries that cannot be achieved by traditional manufacturing approaches. The large space of potential material chemistries combined with non-equilibrium microstructures obtained in AM presents a significant challenge for a systematic exploration and optimization of the final properties exhibited by AM parts when using the existing knowledge databases established for conventionally processed materials. In this paper, we demonstrate novel high throughput assays that can be used to prototype a large library of material chemistries (and possibly different process histories) in small quantities, and subsequently apply spherical indentation stress-strain protocols to screen them for their mechanical performance. The potential of these new assays is demonstrated on a class of Ti-Ni alloys, whose Ni composition ranges between 0 and 11%wt.