Fatigue Improvement of AlSi10Mg Fabricated by Laser-Based Powder Bed Fusion through Heat Treatment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

aThe manuscript entitled: VFatigue improvement of AlSi10Mg fabricated by Laser-based powder bed fusion through heat-treatment focuses on the influence of thermal energy on the fatigue performance of AlSi10Mg alloy produced using laser-based additive manufacturing methods.

• The motivation of this article itself is not clear. Of course, HT is going to hamper or improve the fatigue properties depending on the final microstructure.
• There are several articles that report the fatigue and fracture toughness of AlSi10Mg.  Then why is this article special and what does this article report, which is not reported earlier?
• Weld bed border should be replaced with hatch overlaps. See the following article: Mater. Sci. Engg. A 590 (2014) 153-160. Also in Figures 6 and 7.
• Ref. 27 cited in line 209 is of Al-Si alloy, does not match with the actual reference (which is of AlSi10Mg alloy). 
• Scale bar may be introduced in Fig. 2(a).
• X-axis line is missing in Fig. 3. Also, please double-check Fig. 3 for its correctness.
• Why do the YS decrease and the UTS increase for the NHT condition as compared to HT?
• Careful proofreading of the manuscript is required. For instance: Line 82: instead of reference, the following text is present (Error! Reference source not found). Same error in lines 92, 118, etc.
• Typos should be rectified carefully. Space should be introduced between numbers and units. For instance, 100nm should be written as 100 nm.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I have reviewed the paper titled ‘Fatigue improvement of AlSi10Mg fabricated by Laser-based powder bed fusion through heat-treatment’. The study investigates the effects of heat-treatments on the performance of the fatigue endurance stress on an AlSi10Mg alloy which was additively manufactured.  The outcomes of the paper showed that by utilizing the appropriate HT, the fatigue of an AM component can be significantly increased.

The research is very interesting and I would like to congratulate the authors for their work. Nevertheless, I have some comment to say:

1. The references of the figures are missing, hence a message ‘Error! Reference source not found’ is exhibited all over the manuscript. Revise it.
2. You mentioned that you pre-heated the build platform at 200 °C in Page 2. Did you tested other temperatures for pre-heating the build table?
3. Revise the text of the manuscript in lines 82-83-84 of Page 2.
4. Did you investigate the efficiency of the proposed heat-treatments in other values of the manufacturing conditions? (like build orientation, laser power, scanning speed etc..) If no, how do you suggest that the employed techniques are suitable for increasing the fatigue endurance life of an AM component?
5. Could your findings be applied in various values of AM parameters?
6. In Page 5 (lines 167-168) you declare that increasing ultimate tensile strength lead in higher fatigue life. On the other hand, in your study you proved that the fatigue endurance stress of the parts were significantly increased but the ultimate tensile strength was slightly deteriorated using the appropriate HT. How do you explain this behavior?
7. There is no comment if the suggested heat treatments induced any defects on the manufactured parts like dimensional inaccuracies.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The are numerous typos which should be eliminated, i.e. “harness” line 72 and many other

The introduction is very brief ..there are plenty post processing methods used in literature and also other numerous work which consider the heat treatment to improve the mechanical properties, I suggest looking also to https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cirp.2019.04.116 and other literature work !

May citations are missed “Error! Reference source not found.”

Please provide a citation for “E606/E606M standards,”

You made a trial with different temperature and selected the maximum one as “500°C.” But what about a slightly higher temperature 550°C?

Please provide the entire procedure for preparing the samples for EBSD as is a challenging task for most of metallurgists

There is need more information that were used during ebsd acquisition  i..e. step size? Current and so on ..

The right hand size of Figure 4 should be replotted cause in the actual format it is very iddifuclt to understand the information introduced, other wise you have to separate the data as SHT apart of the aged one

In line 336 you said “. In this figure,” which Figure is about ?

It is necessary to correctly link all the Table and Figures otherwise is difficult to follow this work

Figure 5 was presented for NHT, but it is suggested to insert aldo the best condition after HT as inverse pole figure to understand clearly the process improvement in grain (size/texture and so on)

Please provide details to which Figure do you refer ..also the next sentence is not endorsed by any Figure/Table

“SEM-EDX analyses indicated high concentrations of Fe” can be endorsed by some evidence this ???

“can be explained by precipitation hardening” any citation for this ??

What shows the arrows in Figure 6??

Many speculation rather the authors evidence for explaining the tensile properties

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have satisfactorily addressed the comments raised and hence I recommend the publication of the manuscript in the present form.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you.