Evolution of Microstructure and Defects of High-strength Steels Fabricated by Plasma Arc Deposition

GUO Zhenghua; LU An; ZHAO Mingjie; OUYANG Xianghai; TU Junyang; JIANG Lihong

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-6457.2026.04.008

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Journal of Netshape Forming Engineering ›› 2026, Vol. 18 ›› Issue (4) : 79-89. DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-6457.2026.04.008

Additive Manufacturing

Evolution of Microstructure and Defects of High-strength Steels Fabricated by Plasma Arc Deposition

GUO Zhenghua^a, LU An^b, ZHAO Mingjie^a,b,*, OUYANG Xianghai^a, TU Junyang^a, JIANG Lihong^a

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Abstract

The work aims to optimize the forming quality of 300M steel manufactured by plasma arc additive manufacturing. Taking 300M steel as the research object, a combination of experiment and finite element simulation was used to investigate the dynamic evolution of the temperature field during the cooling process of the deposited layer on the influence law of the microstructure and defects of plasma deposited 300M steel. The results showed that the thickness of the equiaxed grain region of the deposited layer was mainly related to the amount of powder fed per unit length, which increased with the increase of the amount of powder fed per unit length, and there was no significant relationship with the plasma arc current. However, the monotonous linear relationship between the percentage of equiaxed grains in the sedimentary layer and the amount of powder delivered per unit length was not presented. To investigate the influence law of process parameters on the evolution mechanism of equiaxed grains in the deposited layer, a columnar grains-equiaxed grains transformation prediction model was established, and the prediction error was 4%. In addition, it was found from the micro-defect analysis that the porosity decreased with the increase of the bulk energy density. The optimized process parameters based on volumetric energy density were a welding current of 150 A, a scanning speed of 0.06 m/min, and a powder feed rate of 9 g/min, and the porosity under the optimized process parameters decreased to 0.37%. During the additive manufacturing process, the smaller the temperature gradient and the greater the solidification rate, the more conducive it is to the formation of equiaxed grains. Volumetric energy density has a significant influence on porosity. Increasing volumetric energy density can effectively reduce porosity.

Key words

plasma arc deposition / high-strength steel / microstructure / micro-defect / parameter optimization

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GUO Zhenghua, LU An, ZHAO Mingjie, OUYANG Xianghai, TU Junyang, JIANG Lihong. Evolution of Microstructure and Defects of High-strength Steels Fabricated by Plasma Arc Deposition[J]. Journal of Netshape Forming Engineering. 2026, 18(4): 79-89 https://doi.org/10.3969/j.issn.1674-6457.2026.04.008

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