Dear Colleagues,

Additive Manufacturing (AM) of metallic components is attracting enormous interest from academics and industrials given its potential for advanced applications in different fields such as biomedical implants, aerospace, automotive, energy, etc. Additive Manufacturing offers well-known features that are not reachable through conventional manufacturing technologies such as machining or casting. Some of the most appreciated advantages of AM with metallic components can be found in situations where a high degree of customization is required, such as in complex geometries or lightened components, where, in the latter, the mechanical response of the lightened part is achieved thanks to an engineered non-trivial structure.  From the management point of view, AM of metallic parts also offers significant benefits, accelerating the development of new products, favoring, in this way, their quick launch into the market.

One of the main limiting factors for the full development of AM applications within industry is the high degree of complexity of the physics inherent to the process. For example, the consolidation of the metallic powder involves a series of phenomena concerning phase change, fluid dynamics, thermal balance with very high heating and cooling rates, etc. All these concurrent phenomena determine fundamental microstructural characteristics of the consolidated material concerning the shape, size, and orientation of the metallographic grains or the size and distribution of pores, which, in turn, determine the mechanical response of the sample, affecting the quality of the manufactured parts.

Numerical Modelling and, in general, quality assessment techniques offer powerful tools to tackle the complex phenomena influencing the dynamics of the microstructure development during the consolidation of the material in metal AM processes. The understanding of these complex relations allows users and researchers on AM systems to determine the mechanisms that connect the process parameters and the microstructure of the consolidated material, promoting, in this way, the successful application of these technologies.

Prof. Dr. José L. Ocaña
Dr. Francisco Cordovilla
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• additive manufacturing
• direct energy deposition
• direct laser melting
• electron beam melting
• selective laser melting
• metallic powder
• numerical simulation
• solidification
• microstructure
• metallurgy
• dendritic growth
• columnar growth
• residual stresses
• steel
• titanium
• aluminium