Abstract
One of the main limiting factors for a widespread industrial use of the Selective Laser Melting Process it its lack of productivity, which restricts the use of this technology just for high added-value components. Typically, the thickness of the metallic powder that is used lies on the scale of micrometers. The use of a layer up to one millimeter would be necessarily associated to a dramatic increase of productivity. Nevertheless, when the layer thickness increases, the complexity of consolidation phenomena makes the process difficult to be governed. The present work proposes a 3D finite element thermo-coupled model to study the evolution from the metallic powder to the final consolidated material, analyzing specifically the movements and loads of the melt pool, and defining the behavior of some critical thermophysical properties as a function of temperature and the phase of the material. This model uses advanced numerical tools such as the Arbitrary Lagrangean–Eulerian formulation and the Automatic Remeshing technique. A series of experiments have been carried out, using a high thickness powder layer, allowing for a deeper understanding of the consolidation phenomena and providing a reference to compare the results of the numerical calculations.
Highlights
In the Selective Laser Melting Process (SLM), the objective, in an industrial context, is to manufacture continuous solid components layer by layer
The heat conduction conditions for the consolidation process of the successive layers addition, the heat conduction conditions for the consolidation process of the successive layers depend depend on the geometry of the previously consolidated which configures for the on the geometry of the previously consolidated material,material, which configures the pathsthe for paths the diffusion diffusion of the heat
While the general dimensions of the cross sections can be satisfactorily predicted by the theoretical calculations in terms of height and width, the shape of it, at the level of the contact with the substrate is affected, in the theoretical calculations, by some effect of adhesion that makes the transition from the consolidated material to the substrate smoother than in the real case
Summary
In the Selective Laser Melting Process (SLM), the objective, in an industrial context, is to manufacture continuous solid components layer by layer. The layer-by-laser philosophy of production theoretically eliminates the geometrical complexity of the part as a restriction for the manufacturing process. This circumstance provides the additive manufacturing technologies with large advantages to face geometrically complicated designs and a high flexible demand, in comparison with conventional techniques [2]. The use of high thickness powder layers in the SLM process can contribute to improve productivity by reducing the number of steps for a given height of the desired component.
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