Dear Colleagues,

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a rapidly developing family of technologies. Recognized as one of the enabling technologies for the fourth industrial revolution, they are starting to change the traditional industrial landscape. The main beneficiaries of AM applications today are aerospace and automobile industries, and biomedicine. Powder bed fusion (PBF) methods are already widely used for end-products manufacturing from a variety of metallic and composite materials. Two of the main PBF methods are selective laser melting (SLM) and electron beam melting (EBM). However, a more powerful electron beam and vacuum in the working chamber allows for the manufacturing of hard materials including steels and refractory alloys faster, with smaller residual stresses, limited amount of support structures avoiding undesired effects of exposing molten material to residual atmospheric gases. Along with other competitive advantages, it makes EBM quite industrially attractive.

The primary focus of the Special Issue is to present the latest achievements and trends in EBM and the issues common for processing of steels and hard alloys with PBF technologies. We will consider for publication experimental and theoretical research, process simulations and modeling.

The specific scopes of interest include but are not limited to:

• Advanced steels and alloys by PBF AM;
• New electron beam-based technologies;
• Process optimization for mechanical performance;
• New materials design for PBF AM;
• In situ alloying, microstructural manipulation and optimization;
• New approaches in simulation, modelling and in situ monitoring of EBM;
• Functionally, structurally graded and composite steel-based and hard materials;
• Microstructural/mechanical characterization techniques;
• Control of corrosion resistance;
• Emerging applications.

Prof. Andrey Koptyug
Dr. Vladimir Popov
Guest Editors

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• electron beam melting
• powder bed additive manufacturing (PBF AM)
• material and process development
• in situ alloying
• advanced materials
• advanced steels and alloys
• microstructure engineering