Temperature Distribution and Fluid Flow Modeling of Electron Beam Melting® (EBM)

A three-dimensional (3D) numerical model is developed by using control volume method to analyze the effects of the electron beam scanning speed on the temperature distribution and fluid flow of the liquid phase in the electron beam melting® (EBM) of Ti-6Al-4V powder. The numerical calculations are performed by Fluent codes, in which thermal analyses with and without considering fluid flow in the molten pool are compared. A series of experiments are performed with an Electron Beam Melting® machine to verify the numerical accuracy. Compared to thermal analysis without considering convection in the molten pool, a closer numerical prediction of geometrical size of molten pool to the experimental data can be achieved by using thermal and fluid flow modeling. The difference between the melt pool geometry in the two models is due to the consideration of the effects of the outward flow in the fluid flow model caused by surface tension.