In additive manufacturing, the variation of the fabrication process parameters influences the mechanical properties of a material such as tensile strength, impact toughness, hardness, fatigue strength, and so forth, but fatigue testing of metals fabricated with all different sets of process parameters is a very expensive and time-consuming process. Therefore, the nominal process parameters by means of minimum energy input were first identified for a dense part and then the optimized process parameters were determined based on the tensile and impact toughness test results obtained for 304L stainless steel deposited in laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process. Later, the high cycle fatigue performance was investigated for the material built with these two sets of parameters at horizontal, vertical, and inclined orientation. In this paper, displacement controlled fully reversed (R = −1) bending type fatigue tests at different levels of displacement amplitude were performed on Krouse type miniature specimens. The test results were compared and analyzed by applying the control signal monitoring (CSM) method. The analysis shows that specimen built-in horizontal direction for optimized parameters demonstrates the highest fatigue strength while the vertical specimen built with nominal parameters exhibits the lowest strength.

In additive manufacturing (AM), the surface roughness of the deposited parts remains significantly higher than the admissible range for most applications. Additionally, the surface topography of AM parts exhibits waviness profiles between tracks and layers. Therefore, post-processing is indispensable to improve surface quality. Laser-aided machining and polishing can be effective surface improvement processes that can be used due to their availability as the primary energy sources in many metal AM processes. While the initial roughness and waviness of the surface of most AM parts are very high, to achieve dimensional accuracy and minimize roughness, a high input energy density is required during machining and polishing processes although such high energy density may induce process defects and escalate the phenomenon of wavelength asperities. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach to eliminate waviness and reduce surface roughness with the combination of laser-aided machining, macro-polishing, and micro-polishing processes. While machining reduces the initial waviness, low energy density during polishing can minimize this further. The average roughness ($R_a=1.11\mathsf{\mu }$m) achieved in this study with optimized process parameters for both machining and polishing demonstrates a greater than 97% reduction in roughness when compared to the as-built part.

A novel adaptive displacement-controlled test setup was developed for fatigue testing on mini specimens. In property characterization of additive manufacturing materials, mini specimens are preferred due to the specimen preparation, and manufacturing cost but mini specimens demonstrate higher fatigue strength than standard specimens due to the lower probability of material defects resulting in fatigue. In this study, a dual gauge section Krouse type mini specimen was designed to conduct fatigue tests on additively manufactured materials. The large surface area of the specimen with a constant stress distribution and increased control volume as the gauge section may capture all different types of surface and microstructural defects of the material. A fully reversed bending (R = −1) fatigue test was performed on simply supported specimens. In the displacement-controlled mechanism, the variation in the control signal during the test due to the stiffness variation of the specimen provides a unique insight into identifying the nucleation and propagation phase. The fatigue performance of the wrought 304 and additively manufactured 304L stainless steel was compared applying a control signal monitoring (CSM) method. The test results and analyses validate the design of the specimen and the effective implementation of the test bench in fatigue testing of additively manufactured materials.