Effect of Finite Element Mesh Size and Time-Increment on Predicting Part-Scale Temperature for Powder Bed Fusion Process

Abstract

Simulating powder bed fusion processes (PBF) can reveal temperature evolution in transient mode. Accurate temperature prediction using finite element (FE) method demands both mesh and timeincrements to be very small; thus, requiring a high computational cost. To avoid this, in part-scale simulation, coarse meshes representing multiple powder layers added at once, are usually used which results in fast solving of FE models. Powder layers and time increments are lumped in such a configuration, which results in a deviation of the temperature history. This research proposes a methodology to predict the nodal temperature (NT) due to the combined effect of space and time lumping for part-scale FE thermal simulation for PBF processes. It shows its effects in predicting both the local temperature history and the average far-field temperature.