Advanced Surface Modification for Additively manufactured Medium entropy alloy for Improved Mechanical, Electrochemical and tribological Behavior

​Grant Funding for Young Researchers 2025-2027

Based on the criteria related to, surface quality, mechanical, electrochemical and tribological properties, application specific parts can be manufactured using techniques involving traditional and non-traditional methods which may require the usage of heat, pressure or cutting forces to form specific shape. Examples would be casting, rolling, and extrusion, turning, drilling and multi-axis CNC machining involving materials such as cobalt-chromium, stainless steel, and titanium-based alloy. Nevertheless, constraint such as poor surface quality, material waste, dimensional deviation or intricate geometry might be hindering for these conventional processes. Conversely, non-traditional techniques used for manufacturing applications specific parts include additive manufacturing (AM) and subtractive manufacturing (SM). Metal AM especially selective laser melting (SLM) involves creating intricate and customized metal parts with high precision by depositing metal powder layer upon layer, which is subsequently selectively melted using laser or electron beam energy. AM enables the creation of customized and intricate parts closely matching the geometric complexity, which is difficult to achieve with conventional manufacturing. Nevertheless, AM has been criticized for producing parts with residual stress, micro-cracks, and anisotropy thereby necessitating post-processing. In addition to this, medium entropy alloy (MEA) with three elements leading to exceptional properties such as higher yield strength, thermal stability, wear resistant and increased corrosion resistant compared to high entropy alloy are reported recently. Therefore, this project will focus on EDM-assisted, laser assisted, Hybrid and sequential surface modification techniques for improved functionality such as better corrosion resistance, load bearing capability, and enhanced tribological properties. Therefore, developing post processing surface modification techniques for additively manufactured medium entropy alloy can meet the expectation of the various industry and can mitigate the current challenges.