Influence of Laser Power and Scan Speed During Laser-Assisted Multi-layer Additive Manufacturing Using Finite Element Modeling

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is making significant progresses among the research communities as well as in the manufacturing world. Though AM process has the provision of design flexibility, simplification of manufacturing in terms of tooling and scheduling one of the major constraints of AM process is processing time. This chapter discusses the details of AM process and advances in biomedical applications. A 3D transient FEM-based approach is utilized to analyze the influence of laser power and scanning velocity for a laser-based AM process on Inconel 718 alloy having high layer thickness. The temperature-dependent material properties, appropriate boundary conditions and Gaussian-distributed heat source model are incorporated in the process model. Moreover, element’s death and birth feature is used to achieve the addition of new layers during the manufacturing. The evolution of melt-pool as well as the heat flow is discussed in detail in a multi-layer laser-based AM process. The melt-pool dimension increases as the process continues over the successive layers. It is found that maximum temperature and melt-pool dimensions increase with the increase of laser power, while the opposite is observed when the scanning velocity is enhanced. The optimum combination of laser power and scanning velocity results in proper melting and sintering of layers even at high layer thicknesses.