Wear Resistance of (Diamond-Ni)-Ti6Al4V Gradient Materials Prepared by Combined Selective Laser Melting and Spark Plasma Sintering Techniques

An approach of sintering 3D metal printed lattices and diamond nickel-coated particles is proposed which can be used for the production of tunnel boring machine (TBM) cutters and mining equipment blades. Nickel-coated diamond particles are mixed with titanium powder and incorporated into a lightweight Ti6Al4V (3D printed) lattice with the help of spark plasma sintering (SPS) method. Effect of Ti6Al4V lattices size, diamond particles size, and nickel coating layer thickness on wear resistance of composites is discussed. Functionally graded lattice (FGL) structures were produced by selective laser melting (SLM) method, representing an increasingly growing additive manufacturing engineering area introduced in material engineering. Impact-abrasive tribo-device (IATD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and optical surface profiler (OSP) were used to characterize samples. An ab initio design of diamond-metal composite is based on the improvement of impact and abrasive wear resistance of Ti6Al4V by adding diamond particles and by applying of gradient lattice structure. The specimen with larger size of the diamond particle and thicker Ni coating has better wear resistance. In addition, ANSYS software simulations were done to analyze the effect of the presence of 3D printed lattice via nonlinear finite element AUTODYN solver under impact test. Diamond-based gradient composite material produced by combined SLM-SPS methods can be applied in applications where resistance against impact-abrasive wear is important.