Towards an Open-Source, Preprocessing Framework for Simulating Material Deposition for a Directed Energy Deposition Process

Abstract

This work focuses on the development of an open-source framework to simulate material deposition for arbitrary geometries with respect to desired process parameters during a directed energy deposition (DED) process. This framework allows the flexibility to define the element activation criteria used in conjunction with Abaqus. A Python script was developed to extract toolpath coordinates from G-code and implement an element activation sequence that is unique to a specific CAD drawing. This is important for simulating the additive manufacturing construction of complex geometries because the thermal history of the component is dependent on laser path, which has a significant effect on residual stresses and distortion. The results of varying the element activation criteria are compared with simulated temperature profiles.