Advancing efficiency and reliability in thermal analysis of laser powder-bed fusion

Abstract

In laser based powder-bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB/M), parts are fabricated by melting layers of powder using a high-intensity laser beam. During this process, the material is exposed to rapid cooling rates and intense thermal gradients, which are the underlying causes of residual stress formation and development of a unique microstructure in these components. Therefore, understanding the heat transfer phenomenon and reliably representing exposed temperature profiles in simulation frameworks are prerequisites for studying the microstructure and residual stress development during the PBF-LB/M process. This work employs a combination of experimental measurements and model development to study this phenomenon. Thermal properties of Hastelloy X were measured in the as-deposited state and used to setup finite element (FE) thermal simulations of the PBF-LB/M process. In addition, in-situ temperature evolutions near the laser tracks were measured by instrumenting thin-wall structures with K-type thermocouples in a two-stage fabrication process. The gathered data was used to calibrate uncertain modelling parameters, and ultimately, the simulation framework could closely represent the measured temperature histories. To address the high computational cost of FE thermal simulations, an adaptive-local/global multiscale modelling approach was proposed, which substantially reduced computation times without compromising the accuracy of the results. The modelling files and scripts are available in github.