Residual Stress Modeling and Simulation of Direct Metal Laser Sintered Ti-6Al-4V Alloy

Abstract

Abstract Additive Manufacturing is able to accurately create layer wise deposition of a variety of materials from three dimensional CAD models. It is a competitive technology for the future as compared to subtractive manufacturing. This paper presents a Finite Element model of Ti-6Al-4V alloy popularly used for aerospace applications. Ti-6Al-4V alloy manufactured by the Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) technique was used to estimate the residual stresses developed in the specimen. It was found that the residual stress developed along the deposition path was always lower than the yield strength of the alloy. The process parameters are taken as per DMLS technique because this technique is popularly used for metals and their alloys specifically. The effect of laser parameters on the Ti-6Al-4V alloy was studied and the residual stresses generated in the DMLS technique were estimated by Finite Element Modelling.