Invited Speaker

Prof. Chaolin Tan

Jiangsu University

E-mail: cltan@suda.edu.cn

Title: Innovations in Laser-directed Energy Deposition of High-strength Aluminum alloys

Profile:

Chaolin Tan is a Distinguished Professor at Soochow University, he is awarded the Excellent Young Scholars of China (Overseas) and Provincial Distinguished Professor (Jiangsu) in 2024. He was a Senior Scientist and Doctoral Supervisor at Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), A*STAR Research Entities during 2020 to 2025. He served as an Honorary Research Fellow at University of Birmingham and Associate Professor at Guangdong University of Technology in 2019. He is a Fellow of International Association of Advanced Materials (FIAAM) and recognized in the World’s Top 2% Scientist Ranking in 2022-2024. He is on Editorial Board of flagship journal Int. J. Mach. Tools Manuf. and the Youth Editor of The Innovations (IF 33.2), Int. J. Extreme Manuf. (IF 16.1), J. Mater. Sci. Technol. (IF 11.2), Rare Metals (IF 9.6), etc. He has contributed more than 40 SCI papers as the First and Corresponding Authors and 2 books, including 20 papers in flagship journals (e.g., Advanced Science) with an impact factor higher than 10, and 7 ESI highly cited and hot papers. Google Scholar citations over 5000 times and H-index 38. His research experience in Additive Manufacturing is over 10 years, with research interests in materials innovation, machine learning and heterostructured materials around LAM and energy-field assisted additive manufacturing.

Abstract:

High-strength aluminium (Al) alloys (e.g., AA7000 series alloys) are widely used in aerospace due to their high strength-to-density ratio and superior ductility; however, Additive manufacturing (AM) high-strength Al alloys are still challenging due to the intrinsic properties. Although some success in processing high-strength Al alloys has been achieved with laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), these solutions have not yet been translated effectively to laser-directed energy deposition (LDED) process due to evident differences in deposition environment and thermal histories. State-of-art LDED Al alloys suggest a bottleneck in achieving yield strength higher than 350 MPa. This work will introduce materials and process innovations in LDED Al alloys to obtain high strength and high ductility. Several novel high-strength Al alloys customized for LDED will be introduced in terms of printability examination, microstructure evolution and mechanical properties. Innovative LDED processes, such as green laser deposition and coaxial wire deposition, are also investigated to understand the effect of process on the achievable mechanical properties. The synergic invocations in materials and processes achieved an excellent combination of strength-ductility in LDED Al alloys (with yield strength higher than 500 MPa), superior to a wide range of Al alloys processed by LDED.