PSI - Issue 83

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ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 83 (2026) 1–2

The fourth European Conference on the Structural Integrity of Additively Manufactured Materials (ESIAM26) Preface Sabrina Vantadori a,* , Francesco Iacoviello b , Vittorio Di Cocco b a Università di Parma, Dipartimento di Ingegneria e Architettura, Italy b Università di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Meccanica, Italy

© 2026 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the ESIAM26 organizers Keywords: Powder Bed Fusion - Laser Based; Al-Mg-Sc-Zr alloy; Low temperature; High temperature; Tensile properties; Portevin–Le Chatelier

Additive manufacturing (AM) enables the production of components with unprecedented geometrical complexity, often impossible or economically unfeasible to obtain through conventional processes. This capability offers major opportunities for designing lightweight, optimized, and highly functional structures. However, for load-bearing and safety-critical applications, their implementation depends on ensuring structural integrity throughout the entire service life. AM also introduces specific challenges related to mechanical reliability, damage tolerance, and in-service performance. Complex geometries, internal features, lattice structures, thin walls, and local cross-section variations may strongly influence stress distributions and create critical sites for damage initiation. In addition, process-induced imperfections, including porosity, lack of fusion, surface roughness, residual stresses, anisotropy, and microstructural heterogeneity, can significantly affect fracture resistance, fatigue life, and crack propagation behaviour. Therefore, proper characterisation, modelling, and interpretation of geometry-related effects and manufacturing-induced defects are essential for reliable structural integrity assessment and for qualifying AM in critical engineering applications. Within this framework, the aim of ESIAM26, the Fourth European Conference on the Structural Integrity of Additively Manufactured Materials, held in Vicenza, Italy, and online on February 18-20, 2026, was to foster a dedicated community working on this strategic topic.

* Corresponding author. . E-mail address: sabrina.vantadori@unipr.it

2452-3216 © 2026 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the ESIAM26 organizers 10.1016/j.prostr.2026.07.001