Argonne National Laboratory has unique research and analysis tools that let industry gain a deeper understanding of the transformations that metal undergoes during the additive manufacturing (AM) process.  This enables the creation of databases of experimental results that let companies benchmark material properties, interactions and deposition processes so that they can build components with pre-determined high-performance properties, such as increased ductility or resistance to corrosion, and to manufacture those components with consistent, replicable quality.

Argonne can provide predictive modeling and material design because of its world-leading capabilities in materials science: discovering new materials, characterizing them and scaling up the processes for producing them. Experts at Argonne can guide researchers from industry through the process of characterizing material samples from bulk to microstructure under in-situ conditions and developing models and simulations of material interactions at a very high fidelity level of detail.

Argonne’s core capabilities in material design, measurement and analysis span the pre-process, in-process, and post-process phases of metal additive manufacturing. These capabilities are explained below.