Corroborating tomographic defect metrics with mechanical response in an additively manufactured precipitation-hardened stainless steel

The intrinsic relation between structure and performance is a foundational tenant of most all materials science investigations. While the specific form of this relation is dictated by material system, processing route and performance metric of interest, it is widely agreed that appropriate characterization of a material allows for greater accuracy in understanding and/or predicting material response. However, in the context of additive manufacturing, prior models and expectations of material performance must be revisited as performance often diverges from traditional values, even among well explored material systems. This work utilizes micro-computed tomography to quantify porosity and lack of fusion defects in an additively manufactured stainless steel and relates these metrics to performance across a statistically significant population using high-throughput mechanical testing. The degree to which performance in additively manufactured stainless steel can and cannot be correlated to detectable porosity will be presented and suggestions for performing similar experiments will be provided.