Synthesis and characterisation of Fe₃₈Al₂₆Cu₁₆Ni₁₃Cr₆ high entropy alloy processed through combined cable wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process

Materials development has always been a major concern for scientists due to the growing need for advanced materials for severe conditions in automobile, aerospace, energy, and other high-performance sectors where there is always a need for innovative, tailored materials to create complex structures. Multi-component alloy, particularly high entropy alloy (HEA), has proven to be a promising candidate due to its superior mechanical property and unique composition consisting of nearly equal multiple principal components, leading to a high configurational entropy. Additive manufacturing, primarily developed as a 3D manufacturing technique, can be an option to produce the HEAs in bulk for a part. This study designed and developed a novel multi-wire-based retrofitted additive manufacturing setup to produce Fe38Al26Cu16Ni13Cr6. It comprises three wires fed together through a nozzle to produce a wall of multilayer deposit. Mechanical and microstructural characterisation was performed. The thin walls of HEA deposits reveal superior material properties than the base metals. The characterisation of the additive manufacturing process showed that a minimum of 327.57 J/mm² energy density is required to deposit continuous beads. The novel Fe₃₈Al₂₆Cu₁₆Ni₁₃Cr₆ HEA exhibited the best mechanical properties at 1008 J/mm heat input. The material has a microhardness of 385 Hv, an ultimate tensile strength of 1313 MPa at 62% elongation, and an average grain size of 11.1 µm.