Feasibility Study on Additive Manufacturing of Ferritic Steels to Meet Mechanical Properties of Safety Relevant Forged Parts

Additive manufacturing processes such as selective laser melting are rapidly gaining a foothold in safety-relevant areas of application such as powerplants or nuclear facilities. Special requirements apply to these applications. A certain material behavior must be guaranteed and the material must be approved for these applications. One of the biggest challenges here is the transfer of these already approved materials from conventional manufacturing processes to additive manufacturing. Ferritic steels that have been processed conventionally by forging, welding, casting, and bending are widely used in safety-relevant applications such as reactor pressure vessels, steam generators, valves, and piping. However, the use of ferritic steels for AM has been relatively little explored. In search of new materials for the SLM process, it is assumed that materials with good weldability are also additively processible. Therefore, the processability with SLM, the process behavior, and the achievable material properties of the weldable ferritic material 22NiMoCr3-7, which is currently used in nuclear facilities, are investigated. The material properties achieved in the SLM are compared with the conventionally forged material as it is used in state-of-the-art pressure water reactors. This study shows that the ferritic-bainitic steel 22NiMoCr3-7 is suitable for processing with SLM. Suitable process parameters were found with which density values > 99% were achieved. For the comparison of the two materials in this study, the microstructure, hardness values, and tensile strength were compared. By means of a specially adapted heat treatment method, the material properties of the printed material could be approximated to those of the original block material. In particular, the cooling medium/cooling method was adapted and the cooling rate reduced. The targeted ferritic-bainitic microstructure was achieved by this heat treatment. The main difference found between the two materials relates to the grain sizes present. For the forged material, the grain size distribution varies between very fine and slightly coarse grains. The grain size distribution in the printed material is more uniform and the grains are smaller overall. In general, it was difficult and only minimal possible to induce grain growth. As a result, the hardness values of the printed material are also slightly higher. The tensile strength could be approximated to that of the reference material up to 60 MPa. The approximation of the mechanical-technological properties is therefore deemed to be adequate.