Throughout history, Humankind has always dreamt to find a better way to product its surrounding materials and instruments. So the technological ways of materials manufacturing have been developing regularly in order to make structures with more accuracy, complexity and also durability. Nowadays, thanks to technology, we enable to make a 3D complex structures by adding layer upon layer of desired materials, called Additive Manufacturing (AM). Like knotting a carpet, it needs firstly a pre-designed pattern usually provided by Computer Aided Design (CAD), and therefore an appropriate material. So after that the only thing should be done is to add each of the knots together precisely and then weaving the carpet!

Metal AM uses a source of energy like Laser or Electron beam to melt tiny powder of the material layer by layer to fabricate desired structure. However, like any other production techniques, AM has also its drawbacks. Depending on manufacturing parameters, the produced material may have some unexpected microstructures, unwanted porosities or residual stresses.

So studying the interaction of the AM produced micro and macrostructure with the mechanical and chemical environment would be a fantastic area of research.  Degradation of the materials could be mechanical, as a result of loading, or chemo-electrochemical due to exposing in corrosive environment or diffusion of Hydrogen, the naughty atom, into the metal or a combination of them. My area of research is focused on investigating degradation properties of AM metals and comparing it with the performance of conventionally produced metals. AM is in its infancy period and it needs lots of work to be grown up and become a confidential way of production. But it will be happened not too far from now . . .