Rapid Thermal Simulation of Powder Bed Additive Manufacturing

Controlling thermal history is a key factor for the success of an additive manufacturing operation. Thermal history depends on manufacturing strategies i.e., beam path and energy input. Energy input and beam path, are determined by either very simple models at the machine site or complex and time-consuming finite element models. This paper proposes a new thermal simulation method based on abacus to determine energy input along the trajectories. The paper presents first the method. Then, the method is validated comparing its results to finite element simulation and to built part quality.