Although extensive research has been conducted to model the anisotropy of laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) printed Ti–6Al–4V, accurately capturing the as-built microstructure for analysing the resultant mechanical response remains challenging and unresolved due to the complex evolution of temperature history and phase transformation. This study presents an integrated multiphysics modelling framework and experimental analysis for process–structure–property (PSP) linkages in L-PBFed Ti–6Al–4V, incorporating hierarchical microstructure evolution from solidification and solid-state phase transformation (SSPT). By linking the thermal history from initial stages of the PSP linkages to the final mechanical response through the explicit simulation of the key underlying phenomena (i.e. thermo-fluid dynamics, phase transformation, variant selection and crystal plasticity), this framework investigates the inherent anisotropy of L-PBFed Ti–6Al–4V in detail. The proposed framework reveals that the process-induced anisotropic microstructure of L-PBFed Ti–6Al–4V, characterised by the build-direction oriented parent Formula: see text grains and the variants with Formula: see text and Formula: see text nearly aligned with the build direction, exerts a significant influence on the macroscopic yield points under different loading directions (horizontal/vertical), particularly in scenarios involving variant selection. Comprehensive experimental validations are also provided for each simulation module, including thermo-fluid analysis, cellular automaton-based solidification modelling, crystallography-based SSPT simulations and crystal plasticity analysis.
Lee et al. (Tue,) studied this question.