The unusual combination of the fundamentally contradictory properties of high tensile
strength and high fracture toughness found in maraging steel makes it well suited
for safety-critical applications that require high strength-to-weight materials. In
certain instances, additive manufacturing (AM) has produced materials that may be
desirable for safety-critical applications where impact toughness is a key property,
such as structural parts for the aerospace industry or armor plates for military applications.
Understanding the influence of process parameters and defect structure on the properties
of maraging steel parts produced via laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is a fundamental
step towards the broader use of AM technologies for more demanding applications. In
this research, the impact energy of V-notched specimens made of 1.2709 maraging steel
produced by LPBF was determined via Charpy impact testing. Specimens were produced
using different processing parameter sets. By combining the process parameters with
the porosity values of the parts, we demonstrate that an almost full prediction of
the impact properties can be achieved, paving the way for significantly reducing the
expenses of destructive testing.
