Development of a simulation approach for laser powder bed fusion based on scanning strategy selection
Panagis Foteinopoulos, Alexios Papacharalampopoulos, Konstantinos Angelopoulos, Panagiotis Stavropoulos
Abstract
Abstract An important quality-related aspect of metal-based additive manufacturing (AM) parts is the existence of thermal stresses and deformations. To address this issue, a 3D thermal simulation approach for powder bed fusion (PBF) processes has been developed, along with the definition of an index that encapsulates the intensity of the non-uniformity of the thermal field. The proposed approach delivers sufficient and computationally low-cost results regarding the intensity of the expected thermal stresses and deformations. A case study of eighteen parts is presented, in which eight different scanning strategies are tested to identify the optimum scanning strategy in terms of thermal stresses and deformations. Finally, the impact of different design elements on the importance of the scanning strategy selection in terms of thermal stresses and deformations is discussed. Both the developed model and the index have been benchmarked using experimental and computational data.