A new heat source model for selective laser melting simulations based on energy distribution on the powder layer and the surface of substrate

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel heat source model for SLM simulations that considers powder layout, substrate surface, and powder layer thickness changes, improving the accuracy of melt pool shape predictions.

Contribution

A new heat source model based on energy distribution that accounts for powder and substrate effects, validated by experimental comparison.

Findings

Predicted molten pool width error: 6.4%

Predicted connect width error: 9.6%

Enhanced simulation accuracy over previous models

Abstract

In order to predict the more accurate shape information of the melt pool in Selective Laser Melting (SLM), a new finite element temperature field simulations model is proposed. The simulations use a new heat source model that takes into account the influence of the powder layout, the surface of the substrate and the changes in the thickness of the powder layer after fusion on the energy distribution. In order to construct this new heat source model, firstly an improved optimization method based on the gradient descent and the univariate search technique is proposed to simulate the powder layout, and then the laser beam propagation between the powder and the surface of the substrate is tracked and recorded to obtain the energy distribution. Finally, according to the distribution of laser energy between the powder layer and the surface of the substrate, the heat source model is divided into two parts: one is the surface of substrate heat source model being the Gaussian distribution, the other one is the powder layer heat source model-satisfying the Gaussian distribution on the horizontal plane, changes in the depth direction according to the functional relationship obtained by the fitting. In addition, the thickness change of the powder layer after fusion is analyzed, and is taken into account in the heat source model. The powder simulation results are compared with the powder scattering experiment results to verify the effectiveness of the powder model. Comparing the temperature field simulation with the experiment, the results show that the predicted molten pool width relative error is 6.4%, and the connect width error is 9.6%, which has better accuracy and verifies the validity of the temperature field simulation model.