Additive manufacturing of functionally graded metallic materials using laser metal deposition

Functionally graded materials (FGMs) have attracted much research interest in the industry due to their graded material properties, which result from gradually distributed compositions or structures. In recent years, metallic FGMs have been widely studied, and additive manufacturing (AM) has become an important approach to build metallic FGMs. This paper aims to provide an overview of the research progress in metallic FGMs fabricated by laser metal deposition (LMD), an AM process that is widely used in metallic materials. Firstly, the unique material properties and advantages of FGMs are introduced. Then, typical recent findings in transition path design, fabrication, and characterization for different types of metallic FGMs via LMD are summarized and discussed. Finally, challenges in fabricating metallic FGMs via LMD are discussed, and other related aspects in the area of FGMs such as model representation and numerical simulation are proposed for further investigation.