Numerical simulation of selective laser melting process

• Main Author: Ang, Jing Kang
• Other Authors: Du Hejun
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
• Subjects: Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/158505
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Selective laser melting has aroused growing interest in both scientific and industrial endeavors over the past decades, due to its capability to fabricate metal components with complex geometries. As a cost effective alternative, simulation software enables the users to analyze different processes without physically running the experiments which might incur additional cost and time. In the context of this research, selective laser melting simulation of steel powders upon the substrate was conducted to study the relationship between the processing parameters and final quality of additively manufactured single tracks. This was done through the code development in a C++ opensource library called OpenFOAM. By implementing various terms into an existing multiphase solver, the developed model was applied to analyze the melt pool dynamics during the laser melting process. Paraview, an open-source visualization software, is then used to visualize the temporal evolutions of simulation results under different processing conditions. The study reveals various effects on the model when different scanning speeds and heat source are applied. The simulation results observed the formation of different melting modes such as conduction mode and keyhole mode where the shape of the fusion zone resembles a nugget and key shape respectively. The simulation results reveals that a lower scan speed coupled with a high energy heat source would create a keyhole welding mode while a higher scan speed with low energy heat source would create a conduction welding mode.