Verification and validation of a rapid heat transfer calculation methodology for transient melt pool solidification conditions in powder bed metal additive manufacturing

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Abstract

A fundamental understanding of spatial and temporal thermal distributions is crucial for predicting solidification and solid-state microstructural development in parts made by additive manufacturing. While sophisticated numerical techniques that are based on finite element or finite volume methods are useful for gaining insight into these phenomena at the length scale of the melt pool (100–500 μm), they are ill-suited for predicting engineering trends over full part cross-sections (>10 × 10 cm) or many layers over long process times (>many days) due to the necessity of fully resolving the heat source characteristics. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to resolve the highly dynamic nature of the process using purely in-situ characterization techniques [1]. This paper proposes a pragmatic alternative based on a semi-analytical approach to predicting the transient heat conduction during powder bed metal additive manufacturing processes. The model calculations were theoretically verified for selective laser melting of AlSi10Mg and electron beam melting of IN718 powders for simple cross-sectional geometries and the transient results are compared to steady state predictions from the Rosenthal equation. It is shown that the transient effects of the scan strategy create significant variations in the melt pool geometry and solid-liquid interface velocity, especially as the thermal diffusivity of the material decreases and the pre-heat of the process increases. With positive verification of the strategy, the model was then experimentally validated to simulate two point-melt scan strategies during electron beam melting of IN718, one intended to produce a columnar and one an equiaxed grain structure. Through comparison of the solidification conditions (i.e. transient and spatial variations of thermal gradient and liquid-solid interface velocity) predicted by the model to phenomenological CET theory, the model accurately predicted the experimental grain structures.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)256-268
Number of pages13
JournalAdditive Manufacturing
Volume18
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2017

Funding

Research was sponsored the U.S. Department of Energy , Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy , Advanced Manufacturing Office , under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ).

Keywords

  • Additive manufacturing
  • EBM
  • Grain structure
  • Heat conduction
  • Heat transfer
  • Modeling
  • Process-structure relationships
  • SLM

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