Overheating detection in the powder bed fusion of metals using a laser beam through local thermal resistance analysis

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The powder bed fusion of metals using a laser beam is a production technique to additively manufacture parts by melting metallic powder layers with a laser. The geometry of a part affects how the heat is dissipated from the process zone. Geometry-induced heat accumulation results in undesirable processing conditions and part properties. Current approaches to identify locations of overheating are mostly based on thermal finite element simulations. This study presents an analytical approach to detect these locations based on a voxel-wise calculation of the local thermal resistance. With a thermal simulation, it was verified that the presented approach efficiently detects areas of overheating. This allows the automated evaluation of the manufacturability of existing geometries.