Computationally Driven Reliability & Repeatability for Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing of High Strength Maraging 250 Steel

Challenge: Long lead times, vendors going out of business, and unreliable quality control for advanced materials are creating an unstable supply chain for production of large format components, particularly those made of specialty materials. Large area additive manufacturing has been identified as the ideal way to onshore manufacturing and create a flexible, sustainable supply chain for critical high performance materials. We will Deliver: Upon completion of this Phase I effort, a data package will be delivered that shows statistically confident repeatability for Maraging 250 Steel with tensile strength in excess of 200 ksi tensile strength along with other key attributes including charpy, hardness, microstructure, void fraction, and fatigue testing. Proposal: Develop a physics-based tool for predicting process maps that identify the “sweet spot” for reliably, repeatably, and predictably hitting an ideal set of material properties. Leverage that physics-based framework to demonstrate statistically confident experimental builds of Maraging 250 Steel. Vision/End State: Upon completion of the Phase II effort, Solvus and its partners at MSU and WPI, will be able to optimize the desired path plan for a given part, based on predictions from the physics-based models such that the performance of that part, independent of geometry, is reliable, repeatable, and consistent. Competitive Advantage: Solvus, MSU, and WPI have previously collaborated to develop Maraging 250 Steel capable of achieving >200 ksi tensile strength and >8% elongation. MSU & WPI have pre-built (but not fully integrated together) models for predicting thermal behavior and phase formations for Maraging 250 Steel.