A comprehensive review on selective laser melting of aluminium matrix composites reinforced with silicon carbide

Aluminium metal matrix composites (AMMCs) hold significant interest and importance as high-performance materials with enhanced mechanical properties, finding widespread applications in the aerospace and automotive industries. SiC is a significant reinforcement in AMMCs to improve the mechanical and tribological properties. These composites are manufactured using various technological methods, including casting, powder metallurgy, and spark plasma sintering. Compared to conventional processes like casting and powder metallurgy, AMMCs produced through additive manufacturing exhibit significant differences in mechanical and tribological properties. Selective laser melting (SLM) is a suitable modern method for fabricating net-shape, fully dense parts from SiC-reinforced AMMCs. This study presents recent achievements in SiC-reinforced AMMCs fabricated via selective laser melting, divided into eight sections. Beginning with an introduction, the focus shifts to feedstock preparation for composite synthesis by SLM. Subsequent sections discuss the optimization of SLM process parameters to achieve composites with improved relative density. Following this, the fourth and fifth sections summarize the phase formation and microstructure of typical reinforcements and matrix interfaces, as well as melt pool behaviour and densification. The sixth section offers an analysis of the mechanical and tribological properties obtained from SiC-reinforced aluminium matrix composites prepared by SLM, its comparison with composites synthesized by other AM techniques (such as direct metal laser sintering and laser melt deposition), and various conventional manufacturing techniques. The inferred conclusions from the review are presented in Sect. 7, followed by a discussion on future research trends in the development of SiC-reinforced AMMCs through SLM in the final section.