On the preliminary evaluation of formability of Ti6Al4V selective laser melted sheets

Additive manufacturing (AM) processes has been gaining interest for the last few years within a number of sectors including the industrial, the medical or the aerospace. To this regard, the characterization of mechanical properties of AM parts have been recently addressed for determining their elastic behaviour, strength, fatigue properties, among others. In this context, this paper addresses a preliminary investigation on formability of Ti6Al4V selective laser melted sheets under conventional forming. To this regard, conventional forming tests were carried out including tensile tests, double notched tensile tests and Erichsen cupping tests, in order to obtain a variety of strain states resulting in uniaxial tension, plane strain and biaxial strain, respectively. The results obtain provided the process window for deforming plastically this kind of materials, allow assessing the corresponding modes of failure and associated mechanisms and pointed out the importance of post-processing heat treatments for increasing the material ductility.