Signatures of the unique microstructure of additively manufactured steel observed via diffraction

Abstract A series of measurements were designed to gain confidence in the interpretation of the peak breadth in diffraction patterns collected from additively manufactured material, which has a novel microstructure in comparison to the well understood microstructure of wrought materials. Stainless steels made with two additive manufacturing techniques were compared to wrought material. Similar patterns observed in the scattering vector dependence for additively manufactured and deformed wrought materials suggested that the broadening in both materials was related to dislocations. This was confirmed by heat-treatment, during which both materials exhibited recovery due to the annealing of dislocations at the same temperature.