AccScience Publishing / MSAM / Volume 4 / Issue 4 / DOI: 10.36922/MSAM025220042
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

 Forming quality control of Laser Powder Bed Fusion GH3536 alloy: Surface quality, defects, and microstructure

Zhenyu Niu1 ,  Junfeng Zhang1 ,  Fenggang Liu1* ,  Fencheng Liu1 ,  Qifan You1 ,  Lixin Liu1 ,  Xuehao Gao2* ,  Jingyu Xu2 ,  Guangsai Zou2 ,  Hao Qiu3 ,  Shuitao Zhou2
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1 Key Laboratory of Nondestructive Testing (Ministry of Education), Nanchang Hangkong University, Nanchang, Jiangxi, China
2 Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1219 West Zhongguan Road, Zhenhai District, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China
3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
MSAM 2025, 4(4), 025220042 https://doi.org/10.36922/MSAM025220042
Received: 28 May 2025 | Accepted: 4 July 2025 | Published online: 20 August 2025
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Additive Manufacturing of Materials for Extreme Environments)
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

This study investigates the influence of volume energy density (VED) on surface quality, density, defects, and microstructure of laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) GH3536 alloy. Specimens fabricated below 80 J/mm3 exhibit lack-of-fusion pores on surfaces and internally, with pore density decreasing but crack initiation occurring as VED increases. Density consistently exceeds 99.5%, peaking at 99.85% (VED = 167 J/mm3). Excessive VED (208 J/mm3) induces surface warping, reduces cracking, but increases pore size/quantity, causing marginal density reduction. Lack-of-fusion defects nucleate microcracks distributed in layer bands; cracks propagate along high-angle grain boundaries following grain growth directions with significant localized stress. Higher VED increases melt pool overlap rate (70.49% at 208 J/mm3) and aspect ratio (width/depth = 6.9), while reducing cooling rates to 1.2 × 105 K/s.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
GH3536 alloy
Laser powder bed fusion
Surface quality
Defects
Microstructure
Funding
This research is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 52265053, 52361010); the Aeronautical Science Foundation (grant numbers 2022Z049056001, 2023Z049056001); the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (grant number 20242BAB25270); the Social Science Foundation Project of Jiangxi Province (grant number 22GL44); the Science and Technology Research Project of Jiangxi Provincial Department of Education (grant number GJJ2201114); and the Natural Science Foundation of Ningbo (grant number 2024J077).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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Materials Science in Additive Manufacturing, Electronic ISSN: 2810-9635 Published by AccScience Publishing
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