Spall strength of additively repaired 304L stainless steel

Additive manufacturing has the potential to repair damaged parts, but the performance of additive materials under high strain rate loading is still uncertain—especially with the added complexity of an interface with an existing wrought material. In this work, 304L stainless steel samples were intentionally damaged and then repaired with wire-fed laser additive manufacturing. The samples were subjected to shock loading to generate incipient spall. Velocimetry and post-mortem metallography results show that when the additive repair process parameters are optimized to reduce porosity and match the equation of state of the original material, the influence of the repair region on the shock propagation is negligible. The free-surface velocity profile and internal damage morphology of the repaired sample are shown to be practically identical to the pristine material.