A Temperature-Thread Multiscale Modeling Approach for Efficient Prediction of Part Distortion by Selective Laser Melting

Abstract

Selective laser melting (SLM) is a powder bed based additive manufacturing process to manufacture functional parts. The high-temperature process will produce large tensile residual stress which leads to part distortion and negatively affect product performance. Due to the complex process mechanism and coupling multi-physics phenomena, the micro-scale single laser scan modeling approach is not practical to predict macro part distortion since it demands an exceedingly long computational time. In this study, a temperature-based multiscale modeling approach has been developed to simulate material phase transition of powder-liquid-solid for fast prediction of part distortion. An equivalent body heat flux obtained from the micro-scale laser scan can be imported as “temperature-thread” to the subsequent layer hatching process. Then the hatched layer with temperature filed can be used as a basic unit to build up the macro-scale part with different scanning strategies. The temperature history and residual stress fields during the SLM process were obtained. In addition, the part distortion can be predicted with a reasonable accuracy by comparing with the experimental data.