Research Progress in Additive Manufacturing Processes and Properties of Porous Metal Materials

Porous metals are widely used in fields such as construction, metallurgy, petrochemicals, aerospace, environmental protection, energy, and medicine owing to their excellent physical and chemical properties, including low density, large specific surface area, and outstanding energy absorption capacity. However, porous metals feature complex internal structures and morphologies, and traditional manufacturing methods suffer from high processing difficulty and costs. Additive manufacturing technology can easily achieve the manufacturing of porous structures through layer by layer stacking.Nevertheless, the research on additive manufacturing of porous metals remain fragmented and lack systematic and detailed summary. Based on this, the research status of porous metals fabricated by four typical additive manufacturing techniques:selective laser melting, electron beam melting, selective laser sintering, and direct metal laser sintering, were reviewed. It focused on the influences of key process parameters such as laser power, scanning speed, and scanning spacing on the mechanical properties of porous metals. Finally, the development trends of additive manufacturing for high-performance porous metal materials were prospected.