Ti-6Al-4V alloy has a wide range of applications, ranging from turbine blades that require smooth surfaces for aerodynamic purposes to biomedical implants, where a certain surface roughness promotes biomedical compatibility. Therefore, it would be advantageous if the high volumetric density is maintained while controlling the surface roughness during the LPBF of Ti-6Al-4V. In this study, the volumetric energy density is varied by independently changing the laser power and scan speed to document the changes in the relative sample density and surface roughness. The results where the energy density is similar but the process parameters are different are compared. For comparable energy density but higher laser power and scan speed, the relative density remained similar at approximately 99%. However, the surface roughness varies, and the maximum increase rate is approximately 172%. To investigate the cause of the increased surface roughness, a nonlinear finite element heat transfer analysis is performed to compare the maximum temperature, cooling rate, and lifetime of the melt pool with different process parameters.

In this study, the coating of an Al-Cr layer on the surface of a Zircaloy-4 alloy was carried out through plasma pretreatment coating and a laser surface melting process. Two different conditions for laser treatment, severe or minimal surface melting of the Zr alloy substrate, were applied to form the final coating. When there was significant surface melting of the Zr alloy, the solidification microstructure of the newly formed coating layer was mainly composed of needle-shaped Al3Zr, Al(Cr) and Al7Cr phases. On the other hand, the solidification microstructure of the coating layer was mainly composed of Al(Cr) and Al7Cr phases when there was minimal surface melting of Zr base in the laser process. However, when the coating was maintained at 1100 oC for 2 hours, significant inter-diffusion occurred between the phases in the coating. As a result, the upper part of the coating layer was observed to mainly consist of Al3Zr and Al8Cr5 phases, regardless of the laser treatment conditions.