Effects of Gas Nitriding on Fatigue and Crack Initiation of Ti6Al4V produced by Selective Laser Melting

Selective laser melting (SLM) is an additive manufacturing technique which permits fabrication of three dimensional parts by selectively melting consecutive layers of metallic powder. This allows the production of parts with high geometrical complexity. Titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V (Ti64) is widely used in industry due to its high strength-to-mass ratio, corrosion resistance and biocompatibility. SLM increases the application range of Ti64 because of its flexibility for prototyping any part and its low material waste. Nitriding is a diffusion-based thermo-chemical treatment for interstitial harden...