Teresa PÉREZ-PRADO

Abstract

Designing Heterostructured Metals: Predictive Control of Microstructure through Additive Manufacturing

Heterostructured materials offer opportunities to tailor material behaviour by combining distinct microstructures within a single component. Realising this potential requires predictive strategies for controlling microstructure locally and reliably. Metal additive manufacturing offers a promising route, yet the relationship between processing conditions, thermal history and microstructure evolution remains a key challenge.

This talk explores how physically informed process control can enable the deliberate design of microstructural heterogeneity. Using Inconel 939 as a model alloy, it will be shown how the melt-pool overlap can be used as a simple tool to control grain morphology and crystallographic texture, and how high-throughput experiments combined with analytical modelling enable microstructure prediction[1]. The extension of this approach to other metallic systems, including Inconel 718 and aluminium alloys, will be discussed, highlighting both its potential and the challenges of transferring the methodology across materials.

[1] I. Rodríguez-Barber and M.T. Pérez-Prado, Additive Manufacturing, 109 (2025) 104901.