Mechanical and FatigueTesting of Rapid Prototyped Aerospace Titanium Component by Electron Beam Melting Process

Abstract

The mechanical and fatigue behavior of a Ti-6Al-4V structural component that was manufactured by electron beam melting (EBM) was studied. Ti-6Al-4V EBM components were subjected to cyclic loading and monotonic loading tests. The results indicated that the EBM component did not fail before the fasteners in both tests. This was a preliminary study regarding an attempt to model an EBM component to validate the physical tests. An attempt was made to model the monotonic and cyclic testing in the linear elastic region using finite elements with the assumed loading conditions to investigate the stress distributions at each loading condition. Additionally, an attempt was made to use finite element modeling to validate the experimental results within the elastic range.