A gleeble-assisted study of phase evolution of Ti-6Al-4V induced by thermal cycles during additive manufacturing

•A naturally formed gradient structure (~10 mm) is examined on the top of the additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4 V sample.•The gradient structure is composed of the α + β zone, α′+ αm zone to α′ zone along building direction.•A finite-element-based simulation model is adopted to investigate the thermal cycles.•The location-dependent phase evolution for each zone is summarized.•Gleeble-designed experiments prove that the αm and α′ can be retained after multiple thermal cycles.