Haynes® 282® is a gamma prime strengthen nickel-based superalloy developed in 2005, demonstrating an interesting combination of fabricability and high-temperature properties. Naturally, as the additive manufacturing sector grows, the high weldability of Haynes® 282® has not gone unnoticed by the scientific community which saw this alloy as a good candidate for new aerospace applications. This master thesis focusses on the microstructure characterization of Haynes® 282® produced by additive manufacturing.

Multiple additive manufacturing technologies were employed for this project: Directed Energy Deposition with wire, Directed Energy Deposition with powder, and Laser powder bed fusion. Additionally, multiple heat treatments were experimented with in order to observe how the microstructural changes happen with the different additive manufacturing technologies and what types of defects that can appear.

A grain size, gamma prime distribution, and a gamma prime phase fraction analysis were performed with a software called MIPAR. The objective was to investigate the software's capability to analyze the complex microstructure generated through additive manufacturing and retrieve information using comparable micrographs.