Fatigue analysis and heat treatment comparison of additively manufactured specimens from AlSi10Mg alloy.

• Static and cyclic response to 4 heat treatments on AM samples of AlSi10Mg evaluated. • Microstructure reveals negative effects of the printing strategy on the contour. • Self-heating tests result in a thermal response unique for every heat treatment. • Fatigue limits estimated based on thermal response while promising accuracy reached. This research delves into the analysis of various properties of additively manufactured specimens from AlSi10Mg with an as-printed surface, comparing the effects of three distinct heat treatments with an untreated variant. The study assesses both static properties and fatigue responses for each heat treatment, including a detailed examination of the microstructures. In the high-cycle fatigue region, the treatment causing the silicon network to break provides the best output, while the low-cycle fatigue response is dominated by the heat treatment by artificial ageing alone. In addition, this paper introduces a novel proposal on fatigue limit estimation inspired by Luong's and Risitano's approaches based on the self-heating phenomenon. Demonstrating efficiency in its simplicity, this approach holds promise for estimating the fatigue limit. This method provides a cost-efficient and time-saving way to determine the fatigue limit transition on the basis of fewer samples than the traditional methods require. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]