Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Materials Processing Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Effect of real-time cooling rate on microstructure in Laser Additive

Manufacturing
Mohammad H. Farshidianfar ∗ , Amir Khajepour, Adrian P. Gerlich
Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Department, University of Waterloo, ON N2L3G1, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: An infrared thermal imaging system is developed to compare the effects of cooling rate and melt pool
Received 25 May 2015 temperature on the microstructure of 316L stainless steel produced by Laser Additive Manufacturing
Received in revised form 14 January 2016 (LAM) with injected powder melting. The system captures the real-time cooling rate to provide online
Accepted 19 January 2016
monitoring and control of the microstructure at the onset of solidification. Further study is conducted
Available online 22 January 2016
to evaluate cooling rate effects on grain size, phase transformations and hardness. Cooling rate changes
are also studied with respect to the traveling speed, in order to identify a suitable controlling action for a
Keywords:
microstructural controller. The study provides a strong experimental justification of the current theories
Real-time cooling rate
Microstructure
in solidification and microstructural evolution during the LAM with injected powder melting process.
Laser Additive Manufacturing © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Infrared thermal imaging

1. Introduction
Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM) with injected powder melt-
ing implies layer by layer shaping of materials in the form of powder
to arbitrary configurations and geometries, using a comprehensive
integration of materials science, mechanical and control engineer-
ing, and laser technology. The technology is currently being used in
rapid prototyping, coating, tooling and parts repair, cladding and
design of novel alloys or functionally graded materials (Toyserkani
et al., 2005). Parts can be produced with material properties supe-
rior to those of the wrought material with a finer grain size using
LAM (Griffith et al., 2000). In general, the rapid solidification and
high cooling rate values result in detailed finer microstructure. LAM
with injected powder melting is the technology that is applied and
studied in this paper. For brevity, the technology will be abbreviated
as LAM throughout the whole paper.
Despite being a promising manufacturing technology, it is
essential to understand and control the material behavior during
the LAM process to be capable of producing functional parts for crit-
ical industries such as the aerospace, energy and automotive. The
real promise of LAM is the potential to integrate superior material
properties with a precise fabrication process. LAM provides attrac-
tive characteristics including minimal dilution, concentrated heat
source and smaller heat affected zones compared to the more tra-
ditional subtractive manufacturing techniques. The formation of
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mhfarshi@uwaterloo.ca (M.H. Farshidianfar).
the fine equiaxed grains in LAM has two main advantages (Kou,
2003). First, the fine grains help reduce susceptibility to crack-
ing during deposition (Kou, 2003) in LAM as shown by Mitzner
et al. (2012). Second, fine grains can improve ductility and fracture
toughness of the deposit in the case of steels and stainless steels
(Kou, 2003). These advantages make it possible to produce locally
tailored microstructures.
Therefore, there has been numerous attempts to understand
microstructural evolution in LAM to control material properties.
These researches were mainly focused on trying to obtain a set
of optimized process parameters in an offline manner to obtain
desired properties. Ultimate tensile strength, yield strength and
total elongation of 316 stainless steel depositions produced by the
LAM process were compared to annealed bar stainless steels by
Ready (2001). In all cases, the strength properties of the LAM fabri-
cated 316 stainless steel bars significantly exceeded that for the
reported value of the annealed material, whereas, their elonga-
tions did not differ. Pinkerton and Li (2004) studied the connections
between input parameters and final material properties and sur-
face finish in laser cladding of stainless steel 316L. Delgado et al.
(2011) examined the role of scanning speed, layer thickness, and
building direction as process parameters, and noted these all affect
the part quality and mechanical properties of iron-based prod-
ucts manufactured by Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) and SLM
technologies. Song et al. (Song et al., 2014) obtained different tensile
strengths of the Fe/SiC depositions through variations of the SLM
inputs parameters. The processing conditions, microstructural fea-
tures, and mechanical properties of DMLS-processed porous metals
were assessed and the formation mechanisms of pores were elu-

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2016.01.017
0924-0136/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 M.H. Farshidianfar et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478
cidated by Gu et al. (Shen et al., 2008; Gu and Shen, 2008). Li
et al. (2009) later fabricated 316L stainless steel samples with a
graded porous microstructure along the speed gradient direction.
Zhao et al. (2015) studied the morphology of AISI 420 stainless
steel deposition during the SLM process and observed a cellular
microstructure along the direction of the maximum heat flow. In
addition, Shifeng et al. (Shifeng et al., 2014) observed a coarse
grain zone below the Molten Pool Boundaries (MPBs), and a long
and thin columnar grains with the same orientations on two sides
of the MPBs. Though, all these reports offer a good insight into
microstructural variations during LAM, each only cover microstruc-
tural analysis of a specific material inside a specific window of
process parameters. In other words, none of the above researches
developed a general methodology which may be applied to control
material properties during LAM in various materials and process
conditions.
Since LAM is a solidification process, the initial step towards
achieving a fully controlled material property is to understand the
thermal behavior (Flemings 1974; Kobryn and Semiatin, 2003). By
understanding the correlation between the thermal history and
microstructure, precise locally tailored microstructures can be fab-
ricated through graded deposition of single or multi-materials and
optimized process parameters. Elmer et al. (1989a,b) were the
first to characterize the effects of different processing conditions
on the microstructure using the cooling rate in an electron beam
deposition process. They indicated the cooling rate and chemical
composition primarily determine the mode of solidification, solid
distribution and nucleation. Their cooling rates were estimated
indirectly (Elmer et al., 1989a) based on the dendritic arm spac-
ing measurements on 300-series stainless steel alloys, and were
found to range from 7 ◦ C/s to 7.5×106 ◦ C/s . In 1999, Griffith et al.
(1999) used a thermocouple for measuring the melt pool temper-
ature at different passes of a hollow block during LAM. Although
in-situ thermal measurements were acquired, no correlation was
obtained between microstructure and thermal behavior. In a later
study, Hofmeister and Griffith (2001) used CCD thermal imaging to
study the microstructural variation of LENS processed 316 stainless
and H13 tool steels. Spatial temperature gradients were measured
online and later used to calculate the cooling rate since it was diffi-
cult to measure online cooling rate values. Hofmeister and Griffith
(2001) reported cooling rate values ranging from 200–6000 ◦ C/s at
the solid-liquid interface. Doubenskaia et al. (Doubenskaia et al.,
2004; Pavlov et al., 2011; Doubenskaia et al., 2006) used pyrome-
ters and infrared cameras to measure melt pool temperatures for
monitoring laser cladding, however, no microstructural analysis
was carried out. Hua et al. (2008) found a relationship between the
molten pool temperature and the cladding thickness. Zhang et al.
(2012) indicated that the thermal history of a deposition has an
important effect on the microstructure, and consequently on the
final properties of a multi-layer stainless steel 410 (SS 410) thin
wall. Despite having studied the microstructures in LAM based on
well-established metallurgy of solidification versus thermal behav-
ior, none of the researchers were successful to develop an online
monitoring and control methodology for the microstructure.
There are widely used passive microstructure controlling tech-
niques in the welding and casting industries (e.g. grain refinement
and inoculation), however, they are only ideal for bulk material of
low dimensional tolerances, and not suitable for local microstruc-
ture control in graded structures. Furthermore, all grain structure
control techniques in welding are open loop, meaning that they
cannot be monitored online and adapted accordingly. Yet again,
the need for a generalized microstructure control method that
can locally control the microstructure and grain size in real-time
is required in LAM. However, in a recent work by the authors
(Farshidianfar et al., 2015), which is also the basis for the current
study, a real-time thermal monitoring apparatus was developed
469
to control the microstructure of the LAM deposition by means of
real-time monitoring of the cooling rate and melt pool temperature.
The main objective of the present study is to develop a gener-
alized methodology to monitor and control local microstructural
properties of the LAM process with injected powder melting using
real-time cooling rate measurements. By integrating infrared ther-
mal imaging and processing techniques, the real-time melt pool
temperature and cooling rate measurements are obtained. A set
of combined energy and powder deposition density parameters
are used to evaluate the pivotal role of the cooling rate and melt
pool temperature on defining the LAM microstructure. The effect
of process parameters on the real-time cooling rate and melt pool
temperature is evaluated. Moreover, the microstructural evolution
is studied based on the cooling rate and melt pool temperature
variations to produce a general methodology for understanding
microstructural formation during the LAM with injected powder
melting process. This methodology is further expanded to under-
stand the influence of the cooling rate on the grain size and
geometrical dilution. The real-time cooling rate is found to be an
effective parameter for local microstructure control purposes, such
as local grain refinement in ultra-precision parts.
2. Thermal characteristics of the LAM process
Any solidification microstructure is defined by two main solid-
ification characteristics: (1) solidification mode (planar, cellular,
columnar dendritic and equiaxed dendritic), and (2) size of the
solidification structure. Additionally, the two most important
solidification parameters are the growth rateR mm/s , and tem-
 
perature gradient G ◦ C/mm . The travel speed of the solid/liquid
interface is called the growth rate, R. The temperature gradient, G, in
the liquid metal is defined as the tangent of the temperature profile
with respect to distance. The ratio G/R determines  solidifica-
the
tion mode (morphology) while the product GR ◦ C/s governs the
size of the solidification structure (Kou, 2003). Thus, to control the
whole solidification microstructure, one has to monitor and control
the ratio and product of the growth rate and the temperature gra-
dient. Going from one solidification mode to another requires great
variations inside the LAM process, whereas, the size and morphol-
ogy is very sensitive to process parameters. Since LAM is a very fast
solidification process compared to casting and welding, it is diffi-
cult to capture real-time values of the growth rate and temperature
gradient. Moreover, since in-situ real-time cooling rate measure-
ments are difficult to achieve (Hofmeister and Griffith, 2001), no
researcher has obtained a generalized logic on how to obtain
optimized process parameters in order to obtain desired mate-
rial properties. However, it could be possible to measure real-time
cooling rate values with the current thermal monitoring apparatus.
Therefore, there is a great possibility that by measuring the cooling
rate and correlating its variations with microstructural evolution,
one could easily understand and control the local microstructure
formation in real-time.
There are four main mechanisms for grains to nucleate during
LAM (Kou, 2003): (1) dendrite fragmentation, (2) grain detach-
ment, (3) heterogeneous nucleation, and (4) surface nucleation. The
clad-substrate interface provides nucleation sites for the colum-
nar growth. The axes of the columnar crystals are normally in the
direction of heat flow (Davies, 1973). Two phenomena are respon-
sible for production of equiaxed grains, which are desirable in
the process (Flemings, 1974): grain multiplication and convection.
Modeling or predicting convection is a difficult process, however,
convection can be monitored and predicted more easily through
cooling rate monitoring.
The amount of actual heat input during the LAM process defines
the values of the melt pool temperature and cooling rate. A large
470 M.H. Farshidianfar et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478
variety of operating parameters and physical phenomena deter-
mine the amount of heat input. The main input parameters of the
current LAM system can be categorized as the travel speed, laser
power, laser beam diameter and powder feed rate. Since these
parameters affect the heat input simultaneously, it is essential to
use a combined parameter to address their combined influence. The
effective energy per unit area E, and the powder deposition density
PDD (Toyserkani et al., 2005) are two widely used parameters in lit-
erature that can express combined influence of all the main input
parameters.
The effective energy measures the amount of energy delivered
to the process by the laser. This energy is principally responsible
for melting the substrate surface and powder, and is defined by
(Toyserkani et al., 2005):
P
E=
VD
in which P is the laser power (W ), V is the traveling speed of the sub-
strate (mm/s), and D is the laser beam diameter (mm). The effective
energy E is measured in units of J 2 .
mm
The powder deposition density is also a good indicator of the
amount of powder fed to a unit area of the substrate during deposi-
tion. The powder deposition density is defined by (Toyserkani et al.,
2005):
R magnifications of up to50×. All of the height and dilution measure-
PDD =
VD
Where R is the powder feed rate. The powder deposition density
PDD is measured in units of g 2 .
mm
The effective energy and powder deposition density are two
parameters that describe the combined effects of the laser power,
travel speed, laser beam diameter and powder feed rate on the
amount of heat input during the LAM process. The amount of heat
input defines values for the melt pool temperature and cooling rate.
Thus, E and PDD are directly related to the melt pool temperature
and its cooling rate, and indirectly related to the microstructure
formation.
3. Experimental setup
A schematic view of the state of the art Laser Additive Manufac-
turing (LAM) apparatus with injected powder melting used in this
research is illustrated in Fig. 1. This system is composed of several
integrated instruments such as a high power laser (1.1kW IPG fiber
laser YLR-1000-IC with 300m feeding fiber and a Gaussian power
distribution), powder feeder (Sulzer Metco TWIN 10-C), multi-axes
CNC machine (5-axis Fadal VMC 3016), nozzle and an intelligent
controller with a data acquisition system and sensors.
A Jenoptik IR-TCM 384 camera module with a resolution of
384 × 288 pixles and a measuring accuracy of ±2% is used to moni-
tor the thermal behavior of the LAM process. The IR imaging is used
to directly measure the cooling rate and temperature of the melt
pool in real time.
An IR camera defines the real temperature of an object using
a constant emissivity valueε. The emissivity of metallic powders
deposited during LAM (such as stainless steel and titanium) are
highly dependent on temperature, especially at the elevated tem-
peratures of the LAM process 800–2000 ◦ C. The change of emissivity
with temperature in steel is attributed to the formation of an oxide
layer on the surface of the steel as its temperature increases (Sadiq
et al., 2011). This change of emissivity may lead to errors in captur-
ing the real body temperature as high as 100 ◦ C (Felice, 2008).
Since in the current application two temperatures at different
instances of time are subtracted to find cooling rate values, and also
cooling rates are compared and correlated with microstructural
evolutions, a comparative study of the cooling rate values are used.
The cooling rate estimation therefore, is not very sensitive to the
emissivity changes for the current application. Moreover, because
a comparative study is used, no knowledge of the exact tempera-
tures are required. Hence, an average emissivity of 0.6 is calculated
for the material (stainless steel) being deposited and this emissiv-
ity is kept constant throughout the whole process and real-time
temperature calculations.
The deposition powder used in this work is stainless steel (SS)
316L powder, –325 mesh, from Praxair Surface Technologies. The
SS 316L powder had a composition of 0.003 wt% C, 17 wt% Cr,
65.5 wt% Fe, 1 wt% MN, 3 wt% Mo, 13 wt% Ni, less than 0.005 wt%,
0.01 wt% S and 0.45 wt% Si. All experiments conducted used AISI
1030 medium carbon steel substrates with a composition of:
0.28–0.34 wt% C, 0.6–0.9 wt% Mn, less than 0.04 wt% P, and less than
0.05 wt% S. Specimens were sectioned in the longitudinal direction
(1) for microstructural examination. Samples were prepared using SiC
grit paper with grit mesh sizes from 240 to 1200, polished with 1m
alumina powder and auto polished with 1to 0.5m diamond paste.
After each polishing step, the samples were placed in an ultrasonic
machine to remove contamination and later air dried. Stainless
steel samples were etched in Marble’s reagent (10g CuSO4 in 50mL
HCl and 50mL H2 O), to expose grain structure and morphology.
The microstructures were analyzed using optical microscopy with
images obtained from an Olympus AH microscope with objective
(1) ments were also conducted by the Olympus AH microscope.
3.1. Thermography analysis and processing techniques
Thermal images taken using an IR camera only provide temper-
atures of each pixel and thus, require processing and analysis to be
functional for exact microstructural analyses and control applica-
tions.
The intensity of each pixel is directly related to its temperature,
the greater the RGB value (the brighter the pixel) the higher the
temperature. The camera was located at a distance of 20 − 25cm
mm
from the substrate that provided a resolution of 0.5 to0.65 pixel .
The image array has a size of X × Y in which X is the total num-
ber of pixel rows and Y is the total number of pixel columns of
the image. Each element of the array has an assigned row r, and
columnc, with a position vector (c, r). The intensity (RGB value) of
each pixel indicates the magnitude or size of each element.
As stated earlier, to be capable of monitoring changes in the
solidification mode and structure size, it is required to have in-
process knowledge of the temperature gradient and growth rate. It
was also realized that the cooling rate, which is the product of the
temperature gradient and growth rate, has direct influence on the
solidification mode and solidification structure size. Therefore, con-
trolling microstructure during the LAM process requires a complete
knowledge of the real-time cooling rate values. A general descrip-
tion of the thermal algorithm that extracts the real-time cooling
rate is discussed below.
3.1.1. Measuring the melt pool temperature and cooling rate
When a thermal image is taken, the pixel with the maximum
RGB value Imax in each frame, represents the melt pool. Thus, the
center of the melt pool and temperature is found by identifying
the maximum element and averaging its’ value with the surround-
ing elements inside the image array. The cooling rate is calculated
by deducting the melt pool temperature reduction with time at
the onset of solidification. In other words, the real-time melt pool
temperature is stored and later subtracted from the reduced tem-
perature of that point in time. Therefore, temperature reduction in
the melt pool is compared with a measured line of points, having
the highest temperature progressively further from the previous
 M.H. Farshidianfar et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478 471

Fig. 1. Experimental setup in Automated Laser Fabrication (ALFa) lab.

melt pool point. More details on the algorithm are provided in prior
work (Farshidianfar et al., 2015).

3.2. Experiments

To explore the influence of cooling rate or melt pool temper-

ature on the microstructure, a set of samples denoted by series
A with identical effective energy and powder deposition density,
but dissimilar process parameters were prepared. Laser processing
parameters for samples A1 − A5 are listed in Table 1.
The parameters of the B series samples are shown in Table 2,
in which the travelling speed of the laser increases gradually from
Fig. 2. Clad cross section in LAM (Toyserkani et al., 2005).
sample B1 to B4. These samples were designed to study the effect
of the travelling speed on the cooling rate and consequent effect
of the cooling on microstructural properties such as hardness and
length of the test line, PL , is obtained. The mean lineal intercept
grain size.
length,l, is obtained as follows:

3.3. Methods for dilution and grain size measurements 1

Clad height and dilution are two very important parameters
that also define final characteristics of a deposited part. Therefore,
to understand cooling rate and melt pool temperature effects on
these parameters, clad height and dilution values were measured.
In Fig. 2, h is the clad height, w is the clad width,  is the angle of wet-
ting, and b is the clad depth representing the thickness of melted
substrate during the cladding and added to the clad region. The
geometrical definition of dilution is defined as follows (Toyserkani
et al., 2005):
h effect of the real-time cooling rate on the solidification microstruc-
dilution = (2)
h+b
The Heyn (Heyn, 1903) lineal intercept procedure was used to
obtain the ASTM grain size of the current samples. In this proce-
dure three concentric circles were sketched on a random location of
each sample and the number of grain boundary intersections with
the circles, P, were counted. By dividing P with the actual length of
the circles, L, the number of grain boundary intersections per unit
l= (3)
PL
which has a unit of mm. Finally, the ASTM grain size number, G, is
derived by the following:
G = (−6.643856 log l) − 3.288 (4)
4. Results and discussion
In this section, steps are taken towards understanding the direct
ture characteristics. By understanding these effects, the real-time
cooling rate can act as an online monitoring and control signal to
tailor the local microstructure in real-time at the onset of solid-
ification. To develop a general methodology for controlling the
local microstructure during the LAM process, it is necessary to
determine a physical parameter, which directly affects the clad
microstructure. Thus, by controlling such a parameter, a locally
tailored microstructure can be achieved.
472 M.H. Farshidianfar et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478

Table 1
J g
Laser processing parameters of A samples with similar E = 110 and PDD = 0.008 parameters (beam diameter is2.5mm).
mm2 mm2

Sample No. (W )Laser power Travel Speed (mm/min) Powder Feed Rate (g/min)

A1 1031 225 4.5

A2 917 200 4.0
A3 802 175 3.5
A4 688 150 3.0
A5 573 125 2.5

Table 2
Laser processing parameters of B samples for studying the effects of cooling rate on microstructure, and effects of travelling speed on cooling rate.

Sample no. Laser power (W ) Travel speed (mm/min) Powder feed rate (g/min) Effective energy (J/mm2 ) Powder deposition density (g/min)

B1 700 25 4.0 672 0.064

B2 50 336 0.032
B3 100 168 0.016
B4 200 84 0.008

Fig. 3. Low magnification micrograph of sampleA3.

4.1. Combined effect of real-time cooling rate and melt pool

temperature on clad microstructure

To examine the microstructure and morphology of each A-

sample in Table 1, optical micrographs were captured. Different
magnifications were used to analyze both the general clad cross
section geometry and grain size in the deposit.
The macroscopic structure of a deposition is of great importance
since many mechanical and material properties depend on grain
size and grain shape. The microstructures of each A-sample differ-
entiate in different regions of each cross section across the deposit.
Thus, there was no constant morphology for any of the samples, in
contrary to what the theory suggested in terms of a similar heat
and mass input to the system. A low magnification micrograph of Fig. 4. Real time cooling rate of A samples with similar E = 110 J
and PDD =
mm2
sample A3 is shown in Fig. 3 for better understanding of the deposit 0.008 g
parameters.
mm2
microstructure. Generally, columnar zones dominated the bottom
of the claddings at the clad substrate interface (Fig. 3). All other
regions of the clad had a cellular structure (Fig. 3). The macrostruc- process. Thus, real-time cooling rate and melt pool temperature
tures of the A samples were greatly different in terms of grain size of each sample were captured to understand microstructural evo-
and volume percentage of each cellular and columnar zone. lutions during the process. In Fig. 4 and Fig. 5, the real-time cooling
Since the effective energy and powder deposition density of all rates and melt pool temperatures of each sample are illustrated.
samples are similar, none of the microstructural changes can be The average values of the cooling rate and melt pool temperature
interpreted theoretically considering the combined values or laser for samples A1 − A5 are also listed in Table 3.
processing parameters individually. As discussed above, cooling The effect of laser power and travelling speed on the amount of
rate and melt pool temperature directly influence the microstruc- heat input can be interpreted by comparing the process parame-
ture and solidification modes in the melt pool during the LAM ters of the samples, in Table 1, with the cooling rate and melt pool
 M.H. Farshidianfar et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478
Fig. 5. Real time melt pool temperature of A samples with similar E = 110
mm2
PDD = 0.008 g
mm2
parameters.
Table 3
Average cooling rate and melt pool temperatures A samples with similar
E = 110 J/mm2 and PDD = 0.008 g/mm2 parameters.
Sample no. Average cooling rate (◦ C/s) Average melt pool temperature (◦ C)
A1 505 1440
A2 518 1510
A3 511 1576
A4 426 1621
A5 712 1683
temperatures in Table 3. According to Table 1, the power, travel-
ling speed and powder feed rate decrease gradually from A1 to A5.
Decreasing power results in less heat input, whereas decreasing
traveling speed results in more concentrated energy and heat. Thus,
the power and travelling speed have an opposing influence on the
amount of heat during the LAM process.
In Table 3, the melt pool temperature increases from sample
A1 to A5, which indicates an increase in the absorbed heat. As it
is stated in Table 1, the A-samples have similar effective energy
and powder deposition density. Therefore, the amount of available
powder per unit area is the same for all of the A-samples. Since
the effective energy is also the same, there is equal powder and
energy density for all samples in theory. Thus, it cannot be stated
that there is less powder to melt while the PDD is constant. Neither
can the effect of less powder be neglected. It can be concluded that
the changing process parameters (which also includes the feed rate)
result in different absorption of the laser and change in the absorbed
heat, which cannot be predicted by the theoretical parameters. The
increasing melt pool temperature and absorption can be attributed
to the decreasing travelling speed, which increases the heat absorp-
tion. Although, according to Eq. (1), the laser power and travelling
speed have similar effects on the theoretical value of the effective
energy, the traveling speed is found to be more influential on the
actual heat input than the laser power. On the other hand, the pres-
ence of less powder at lower feed rates also contributes to the melt
pool temperature increase.
On the other hand, the cooling rate behaves in a nonlinear fash-
ion. Samples A1 − A3 have an equal value of cooling rate, whereas,
samples A4 and A5 have different values. Since the effective energy
and powder deposition density of the samples are similar in theory
(Table 3) however, a similar cooling rate and melt pool tempera-
ture were predicted. This inconsistent behavior of the cooling rate
makes it difficult to correlate it with the combined influence of
travel speed or laser power. It is noteworthy to point out that due
the inconsistent behavior of the cooling rate and melt pool tem-
peratures in Table 3, and also to study the repeatability of the
measurements, each sample was deposited two times and similar
results were observed.
473
Table 4
Geometrical dilution and clad height of the A samples with similar E = 110 J/mm2
and PDD = 0.008 g/mm2 parameters.
Sample A1 A2 A3 A4 A5
Clad height 81m 76m 66m 70m 7m
Geometrical dilution 48% 51% 52% 43% 63%
Consequently, convection has a vital role in forming the colum-
nar and cellular zones. On the other hand, increasing convection
results in increased cooling rate that is monitored by the IR camera.
The melt pool temperature has a great effect on the formation of
the equiaxed grains. When the melt pool temperature is high, the
J
and separated dendrite arms melt and disappear. Hence, as the melt
pool temperature increases, the tendency to form equiaxed grains
should decrease. Generally, the equiaxed grains that form in high
melt pool temperatures have an increased grain size (Chalmers,
1963).
It is essential to understand microstructural changes and their
correlation with cooling rate and melt pool temperature variations.
High magnification micrographs are required to compare grain size
and grain shapes in more detail, where micrographs of each sample
are shown in Fig. 6. These micrographs have all been taken at similar
locations at the center of the claddings.
Samples A1 − A3 have very similar macrostructural and
microstructural (Fig. 6) properties. Their macrostructures consist
of an initial columnar zone at the clad substrate interface with a
region of cellular zone in the center. Moreover, according to Fig. 6,
generally the size of these grains for samples A1 − A3 are also iden-
tical. As observed in Table 3, these samples were solidified with
similar cooling rate values but different melt pool temperatures.
The macrostructural consistency with the cooling rate indicates
a strong relation between these two parameters. Compared to
A1 − A3, sample A4 has a greater columnar region and less frac-
tion of cellular grains. This change is due to the decreasing value of
the cooling rate for A4 compared to A1 − A3. The lower cooling rate
in sample A4 provides more time for the columnar grains to grow,
making it difficult for the cellular grains to further nucleate and
precipitate. In addition, the higher melt pool temperature in sam-
ple A4 further reduces the chances of the cellular crystals to survive
in the melt pool. On the other hand, sample A5 has the largest cel-
lular region amongst all the samples. This greater cellular region
is caused by the high cooling rate value measured in sample A5.
The increased cooling rate is a burden for dendrites to grow, thus,
resulting in early coarsening and separation of their tips that form
the equiaxed grains. In spite of the increased cellular region due to
higher cooling rate, the equiaxed grains in A5 are much bigger in
size compared to the ones in sample A4. Examining Table 3, it can be
noted that sample A5 has a higher melt pool temperature than sam-
ple A4. As stated earlier, it is harder for the cellular grains to grow in
high melt pool temperatures since the smaller grains re-melt due
to the high temperature of the melt pool. Thus, only the bigger cel-
lular grains survived and grown in sample A5 due to a higher melt
pool temperature. Moreover, since there are fewer columnar grains
to limit the growth of the cellular region, the cellular grains grow
rapidly and yield a larger size in sample A5.
4.1.1. Effect of real-time cooling rate and melt pool temperature
on geometrical dilution and clad height
In Table 4, clad height and geometrical dilution are calculated
for the samples listed in Table 1. The clad height decreases from A1
to A5. This decrease is in good agreement with the increasing melt
pool temperature for these samples as listed in Table 3, whereas, it
does not have any relation with the cooling rates of these samples.
Thus, as the melt pool temperature increases, the clad height of the
samples decrease.
474 M.H. Farshidianfar et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478

J g
Fig. 6. High magnification 50× micrographs of samples A1 through A5 with similar values of E = 110 and PDD = 0.008 parameters.
mm2 mm2

On the contrary, the geometrical dilution does not have any

specific trend on samples A1 to A5. However, by comparing the real-
time cooling rates (Table 3) with the geometrical dilution of each
sample, it is observed that there is a positive correlation between
the cooling rate and dilution. Sample A5, which has the highest geo-
metrical dilution also has the highest cooling rate. In addition, A4
has the lowest dilution because of its low cooling rate. On the other
hand, samples A1, A2 and A3, which have identical cooling rates, all
have similar geometrical dilutions.
In order to better illustrate the correlation between the cooling
rate and geometrical dilution of the A series samples, geometri-
cal dilution is plotted as a function of cooling rate in Fig. 7. A
pseudo-linear relation exists between the real-time cooling rate
and geometrical dilution. The increase in relative powder feed from Fig. 7. Clad geometrical dilution as a function of cooling rate.
A5 to A1 is commonly known to cavern the dilution and cooling rate,
since there is less interaction between cold powder and laser beam,
microstructural evolutions inside LAM are understood and con-
which with low powder feeding rate can enter more freely to solid
trolled by online monitoring of the cooling rate. Moreover, dilution,
substrate heating it further.
which is of great importance during the LAM process, was found to
Clearly, it is the cooling rate rather than the melt pool tem-
have a close correlation with the real-time cooling rate as well.
perature that is governing the microstructure at the onset of the
solidification process. Such a conclusion is widely accepted in the-
4.2. Effect of real-time cooling rate on microstructure
ory and literature, however, no online measurements of the cooling
rate were available to further prove the pivotal influence of this
Having defined the cooling rate as the most influential parame-
physical parameter during the LAM process. Therefore, real-time
ter on the microstructural evolution, it is necessary to study the sole
 M.H. Farshidianfar et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478
 mm
 
Fig. 8. Cooling rate of B samples: B1 v = 25 min , B2 v = 50 min
 
andB4 v = 200 mm
min
. B3
Fig. 
9. Melt  pool  
temperature  of
B1 v = 25 mm , B2 v = 50 mm , B3 v = 100 mm and B4 v = 200 mm .
min min min
effect of real-time cooling rate on the clad microstructure. On the
other hand, it was also observed that the travel speed had a greater
influence on the cooling rate compared to the other two parameters
(i.e. laser power and powder feed rate). Thus, a new set of experi-
ments were conducted; changing the travel speed, while keeping
the laser power and powder feed rate constant during single-line
depositions.
Cooling rate and melt pool temperatures of the B samples are
presented in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9, respectively. It is apparent from these
figures that as the speed increases, the cooling rate increases dra-
matically, whereas the melt pool temperature decreases. Although,
the cooling rate and melt pool temperature are both affected by the
speed change, the changes in the cooling rate are more significant.
More interestingly, cooling rate measurements reveal that as the
effective energy (E) drops (see Table 2) from sample B1 to B4, the
cooling rate increases. On the other hand, although, the decrease
in E should result in a decrease in the melt pool temperature, an
increasing trend is observed for the melt pool temperature. This
increase of melt pool temperature is due to the decreasing powder
deposition density (PDD) (see Table 2), which indicates less amount
of mass to be heated up. Therefore, it is observed that the effective
energy (E) is positively correlated with the cooling rate, whereas, it
is the powder deposition density (PDD) that defines the melt pool
temperature.
In order to compare cooling rate and melt pool temperature
variations in more detail, the average cooling rate and melt pool
temperature values of the stable regions in each of the B samples
are listed in Table 5. Fig. 10 compares low magnification micro-
graphs of the B samples. Sample B1 has a greater height compared
to the other samples, hence, only top of the sample B1 clad is shown.
The solidification of the  SS 316L undergoes
  the following
transitions:(L) → ( + L) →  + ı + L →  + ı → (). Thus,
the primary solidification occurs as austenite and since the line
475
Table 5
Average cooling rate and melt pool temperatures B samples for studying cooling
rate effects on microstructural evolutions.
Sample no. Average cooling rate (◦ C/s) Average melt pool temperature (◦ C)
B1 22 2053
B2 39 1630
B3 248 1434
B4 764 1153
Table 6
Micro hardness results of B samples.
Sample no. Hardness (HV1000) Average cooling rate ((◦ C/s))
mm
  mm
 B1 150.5 22
, B3 v = 100 min
B2 150.5 39
153.3 248
B4 368.0 764
is located on the left side of the three-phase equilibrium triangle
it shall remain austenitic upon cooling to room temperature.
Microstructures of the SS 316L depositions in Fig. 10 consist of
two regions: (1) light regions, which represent the -austenite
phase, and (2) dark regions, which represent the ı −ferrite phase.
According to Table 5 and the micrographs shown in Fig. 10, as
the cooling rate decreases from B1 to B3 the ferrite content of the
deposition decreases likewise. The increased cooling rate in B3 and

to some extent  reduces
in B2,  the  chances of ı-ferrite formation.
Since the  + ı + L and  + ı inter-phases are formed at very
narrow temperature ranges, high cooling rates will reduce the
total time of transitions in which ı-ferrite is formed. Thus, at high
 B  samples: cooling rates less time is allocated for the formation of the ı-ferrite
min phase, resulting in a primary uniform austenite phase with cellular
and dendritic austenitic substructures.
Surprisingly, B4 has a higher content of ferrite compared to B2
and B3, although having a much greater cooling rate. Moreover,
compared to the cellular microstructure of samplesB1 − B3, sam-
ple B4 has a needle-like microstructure. This type of microstructure
◦
and the very high cooling rate (C = 764 sC ) are signs of marten-
site formation during solidification. To verify whether sample B4
is martensite or not, micro hardness tests were taken from these
samples. Table 6 shows the micro hardness of the B samples, which
were measured at similar locations on top of the clad cross sections.
It is clear that B4 has a much greater hardness compared to the other
three samples, and values >350HV are indications that martensite
is present. Since martensite has a higher hardness compared to
austenite, the higher hardness in sample B4indicates that the pri-
mary phase in this sample is martensite opposed to austenite in
◦
samplesB1 − B3. Since B4 has a very high cooling rate (C = 764 sC ),
the austenite is quenched to the unstable phase martensite, which
is not present in the other samples. Thus, the significance of cooling
rate on the primary phase of solidification is once again justified.
Furthermore, as a consequence of the high cooling rate, B4 has a
higher dilution. Therefore, due to the higher geometrical dilution
of the mild steel substrate, martensite is produced.
4.2.1. Grain size variation with cooling rate
To better illustrate grain size variations in the microstructure,
a higher magnification micrograph of the B samples are presented
in Fig. 11. There is significant correlation between the grain size
and real-time cooling rate. According to Fig. 10 and Fig. 11, with
successive increase of the cooling rate, grain boundaries shrink
drastically. Consequently, B1, which has the lowest cooling rate,
yields the largest grain size, and B4, which has the highest cooling
rate, has very fine grain structures.
The ASTM grain size number of each B sample is listed in Table 7.
For each sample, three fields were measured. The subsequent grains
476 M.H. Farshidianfar et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478

Fig. 10. Low magnification micrographs of B samples.

Fig. 11. High magnification micrographs of Bsamples.

Table 7
Grain size number of the B samples with changing speed.

Sample no. G-ASTM grain size (No.) NA -Grains/unit area (No./mm2 at1×) d̄ -Average grain diameter (␮m)

B1 9 3968.0 15.9
B2 10 7936.0 11.2
B3 12 31744.1 5.6
 M.H. Farshidianfar et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 231 (2016) 468–478
Fig. 12. Effect of traveling speed on cooling rate.
Fig. 13. Effect of traveling speed on melt pool temperature.
per unit area (NA ) and average grain diameter (d̄) of each grain size
number were also obtained using the tables provided in ASTM stan-
dard E 112 from the experimentally measured G-ASTM grain size
number.
The results show that the number of grains per unit increases
with the cooling rate. On the other hand, the grain diameter
decrease with the increasing cooling. However, more measure-
ments at different cooling rates are required to establish an analytic
relation between the cooling rate and the grain size. Generally, the
cooling rate has direct effect on: (1) the volumetric percentage of
austenite and ferrite phases inside the microstructure, (2) forma-
tion and growth of these phases, and (3) grain boundaries and grain
size.
4.3. Cooling rate and microstructure variations with travelling
speed
It was realized that cooling rate variations resulted in
microstructural evolutions, however, the source of these variations
and the effects of speed on the cooling rate were not discussed.
It is quite revealing to combine the input and output data of
the LAM process in Table 2 and Table 5. In samples B1 − B4 only
the travelling speed is changing, with a constant laser power and
powder feed rate. The cooling rate and melt pool temperature are
graphically sketched as a function of the traveling speed in Fig. 12
and Fig. 13, respectively.
The increasing speed has created an increasing trend for cooling
rate and a decreasing trend for the melt pool temperature. Appar-
ently, the traveling speed has a linear relation with the cooling rate
and melt pool temperature, if the data from the B1 sample were
to be neglected. In Fig. 13 the cooling rate is nearly doubled by
doubling the traveling speed. The traveling speed directly affects
the cooling rate and hence indirectly affects the clad microstruc-
ture. Taken together, these results suggest that real time cooling
477
rate control may be used to tailor the microstructure changes by
varying laser power and traveling speed.
5. Conclusion
Using a novel infrared thermal imaging technique, real-time
cooling rate and melt pool temperature of the LAM process were
captured online during solidification. A set of samples with identi-
cal effective energy and powder deposition density values were
produced. Although, the amount of heat and mass input for all
samples were the same, different microstructures were observed.
Studying real-time cooling rate values measured by the developed
system, positive correlations were observed between microstruc-
ture changes and variations of the real-time cooling rate during
solidification. Microstructural analysis proved that both the size
of the solidification structure and mode of solidification can be
defined by the real-time cooling rate. Additionally, the geometrical
dilution of different samples was observed to be in direct relation
with the cooling rate. Finally, the change of the cooling rate and
melt pool temperature were studied as a function of the travelling
speed.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of
the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2016.
01.017.
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