Metal additive manufacturing (AM), especially laser powder bed fusion (LPBF or PBF-LB), has been used for prototype manufacturing as well as for serial production. Typically, a single feedstock material is used and if the application requires the combination of two materials, individual components are coated or joined. To expand the application of LPBF with its advantageous design flexibility, components requiring two materials could be manufactured using two different feedstock materials.
The material combination aluminium and steel has great lightweighting potential. This material pairing, however, is known to pose challenges such as different thermal expansion coefficients or brittle intermetallic phases at the joining interface. LPBF could offer a solution to the challenge of creating combined Al+Steel components by adjusting process parameters.
This study investigated the combination of 316L stainless steel with the Al alloy 5083. Both composition and microstructure of the material interface were analysed with particular emphasis on the formation of undesirable, intermetallic phases. Analysis techniques comprised standard metallography and SEM imaging complemented by EDS and EBSD analysis. Finally, static mechanical properties were investigated by performing tensile tests of specimens containing the material interface.