Investigation of significant factors on deformation with powder bed fusion system

Author(s):  
Tan Pan ◽  
Lan Li ◽  
Xinchang Zhang ◽  
Aaron Flood ◽  
Sreekar Karnati ◽  
...  

Powder bed fusion (PBF) is one of the most popular techniques in additive manufacturing (AM). The PBF technique of selective laser melting (SLM) consolidates powder layer by layer using a laser as the energy source. This technique ensures the processes capability of fabricating components with internal and external complex geometries, which could be challenging to make with conventional manufacturing methods. However, the cyclic heating and cooling inherent in this process give rise to the buildup of residual stresses, which can distort or completely deform the part. In this work, a screening build with nine factors was designed to investigate the effects of component size, support structure, and energy input on the build completion and average distortion induced by the inherent residual stress. Experimental results indicated that support hatch spacing, part thickness, and support contact spacing played dominant roles in the final quality (i.e. resultant deformation) of the built parts. The identified significant factors from this study can be carefully selected to increase the success rates of single builds and improve the qualities (i.e. geometric accuracy) of the final products.

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 2842
Author(s):  
Lucia Lizzul ◽  
Rachele Bertolini ◽  
Andrea Ghiotti ◽  
Stefania Bruschi

Additive manufacturing processes induce a high orientation in the microstructure of the printed part due to the strong thermal gradients developed during the process caused by the highly concentrated heat source that is used to melt the metal powder layer-by-layer. The resulting microstructural anisotropy may have an effect on the post-processing operations such as machining ones. This paper investigates the influence of the anisotropy in turning operations carried out on laser powder bed fused Ti6Al4V parts manufactured with different scanning strategies. The machinability under both transverse and cylindrical turning operations was assessed in terms of surface integrity, considering both surface and sub-surface aspects. The effect of the different cooling conditions, that is flood and cryogenic ones, was studied as well. The outcomes showed that the microstructural anisotropy had a remarkable effect on the machining operations and that the cryogenic cooling enhanced the effect of the anisotropy in determining the surface integrity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mevlüt Yunus Kayacan ◽  
Nihat Yılmaz

Abstract Among additive manufacturing technologies, Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF) is considered the most widespread layer-by-layer process. Although the L-PBF, which is also called as SLM method, has many advantages, several challenging problems must be overcome, including part positioning issues. In this study, the effect of part positioning on the microstructure of the part in the L-PBF method was investigated. Five Ti6Al4V samples were printed in different positions on the building platform and investigated with the aid of temperature, porosity, microstructure and hardness evaluations. In this study, martensitic needles were detected within the microstructure of Ti6Al4V samples. Furthermore, some twins were noticed on primary martensitic lines and the agglomeration of β precipitates was observed in vanadium rich areas. The positioning conditions of samples were revealed to have a strong effect on temperature gradients and on the average size of martensitic lines. Besides, different hardness values were attained depending on sample positioning conditions. As a major result, cooling rates were found related to positions of samples and the location of point on the samples. Higher cooling rates and repetitive cooling cycles resulted in microstructures becoming finer and harder.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Kolb ◽  
Reza Elahi ◽  
Jan Seeger ◽  
Mathews Soris ◽  
Christian Scheitler ◽  
...  

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the signal dependency of the camera-based coaxial monitoring system QMMeltpool 3D (Concept Laser GmbH, Lichtenfels, Germany) for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) under the variation of process parameters, position, direction and layer thickness to determine the capability of the system. Because such and similar monitoring systems are designed and presented for quality assurance in series production, it is important to present the dominant signal influences and limitations. Design/methodology/approach Hardware of the commercially available coaxial monitoring QMMeltpool 3D is used to investigate the thermal emission of the interaction zone during LPBF. The raw images of the camera are analysed by means of image processing to bypass the software of QMMeltpool 3D and to gain a high level of signal understanding. Laser power, scan speed, laser spot diameter and powder layer thickness were varied for single-melt tracks to determine the influence of a parameter variation on the measured sensory signals. The effects of the scan direction and position were also analysed in detail. The influence of surface roughness on the detected sensory signals was simulated by a machined substrate plate. Findings Parameter variations are confirmed to be detectable. Because of strong directional and positional dependencies of the melt-pool monitoring signal a calibration algorithm is necessary. A decreasing signal is detected for increasing layer thickness. Surface roughness is identified as a dominating factor with major influence on the melt-pool monitoring signal exceeding other process flaws. Research limitations/implications This work was performed with the hardware of a commercially available QMMeltpool 3D system of an LPBF machine M2 of the company Concept Laser GmbH. The results are relevant for all melt-pool monitoring research activities connected to LPBF, as well as for end users and serial production. Originality/value Surface roughness has not yet been revealed as being one of the most important origins for signal deviations in coaxial melt-pool monitoring. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the direct comparison of influences because of parameters and environment has not been published to this extent. The detection, evaluation and remelting of surface roughness constitute a plausible workflow for closed-loop control in LPBF.


Crystals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elham Mirkoohi ◽  
Hong-Chuong Tran ◽  
Yu-Lung Lo ◽  
You-Cheng Chang ◽  
Hung-Yu Lin ◽  
...  

Rapid and accurate prediction of residual stress in metal additive manufacturing processes is of great importance to guarantee the quality of the fabricated part to be used in a mission-critical application in the aerospace, automotive, and medical industries. Experimentations and numerical modeling of residual stress however are valuable but expensive and time-consuming. Thus, a fully coupled thermomechanical analytical model is proposed to predict residual stress of the additively manufactured parts rapidly and accurately. A moving point heat source approach is used to predict the temperature field by considering the effects of scan strategies, heat loss at part’s boundaries, and energy needed for solid-state phase transformation. Due to the high-temperature gradient in this process, the part experiences a high amount of thermal stress which may exceed the yield strength of the material. The thermal stress is obtained using Green’s function of stresses due to the point body load. The Johnson–Cook flow stress model is used to predict the yield surface of the part under repeated heating and cooling. As a result of the cyclic heating and cooling and the fact that the material is yielded, the residual stress build-up is precited using incremental plasticity and kinematic hardening behavior of the metal according to the property of volume invariance in plastic deformation in coupling with the equilibrium and compatibility conditions. Experimental measurement of residual stress was conducted using X-ray diffraction on the fabricated IN718 built via laser powder bed fusion to validate the proposed model.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1151 ◽  
pp. 3-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonora Santecchia ◽  
Paolo Mengucci ◽  
Andrea Gatto ◽  
Elena Bassoli ◽  
Lucia Denti ◽  
...  

Powder bed fusion (PBF) is an additive manufacturing technique, which allows to build complex functional mechanical parts layer-by-layer, starting from a computer-aided design (CAD) model. PBF is particularly attractive for biomedical applications, where a high degree of individualization is required. In this work, the microstructure of two biomedical alloys, namely Co-Cr-Mo and Ti-6Al-4V, were studied by X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy techniques. Hardness and tensile tests were performed on the sintered parts.


Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 3284
Author(s):  
Asif Ur Rehman ◽  
Muhammad Arif Mahmood ◽  
Fatih Pitir ◽  
Metin Uymaz Salamci ◽  
Andrei C. Popescu ◽  
...  

In the laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process, the operating conditions are essential in determining laser-induced keyhole regimes based on the thermal distribution. These regimes, classified into shallow and deep keyholes, control the probability and defects formation intensity in the LPBF process. To study and control the keyhole in the LPBF process, mathematical and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models are presented. For CFD, the volume of fluid method with the discrete element modeling technique was used, while a mathematical model was developed by including the laser beam absorption by the powder bed voids and surface. The dynamic melt pool behavior is explored in detail. Quantitative comparisons are made among experimental, CFD simulation and analytical computing results leading to a good correspondence. In LPBF, the temperature around the laser irradiation zone rises rapidly compared to the surroundings in the powder layer due to the high thermal resistance and the air between the powder particles, resulting in a slow travel of laser transverse heat waves. In LPBF, the keyhole can be classified into shallow and deep keyhole mode, controlled by the energy density. Increasing the energy density, the shallow keyhole mode transforms into the deep keyhole mode. The energy density in a deep keyhole is higher due to the multiple reflections and concentrations of secondary reflected beams within the keyhole, causing the material to vaporize quickly. Due to an elevated temperature distribution in deep keyhole mode, the probability of pores forming is much higher than in a shallow keyhole as the liquid material is close to the vaporization temperature. When the temperature increases rapidly, the material density drops quickly, thus, raising the fluid volume due to the specific heat and fusion latent heat. In return, this lowers the surface tension and affects the melt pool uniformity.


Author(s):  
Bo Cheng ◽  
Brandon Lane ◽  
Justin Whiting ◽  
Kevin Chou

Powder bed metal additive manufacturing (AM) utilizes a high-energy heat source scanning at the surface of a powder layer in a pre-defined area to be melted and solidified to fabricate parts layer by layer. It is known that powder bed metal AM is primarily a thermal process and further, heat conduction is the dominant heat transfer mode in the process. Hence, understanding the powder bed thermal conductivity is crucial to process temperature predictions, because powder thermal conductivity could be substantially different from its solid counterpart. On the other hand, measuring the powder thermal conductivity is a challenging task. The objective of this study is to investigate the powder thermal conductivity using a method that combines a thermal diffusivity measurement technique and a numerical heat transfer model. In the experimental aspect, disk-shaped samples, with powder inside, made by a laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) system, are measured using a laser flash system to obtain the thermal diffusivity and the normalized temperature history during testing. In parallel, a finite element model is developed to simulate the transient heat transfer of the laser flash process. The numerical model was first validated using reference material testing. Then, the model is extended to incorporate powder enclosed in an LPBF sample with thermal properties to be determined using an inverse method to approximate the simulation results to the thermal data from the experiments. In order to include the powder particles’ contribution in the measurement, an improved model geometry, which improves the contact condition between powder particles and the sample solid shell, has been tested. A multi-point optimization inverse heat transfer method is used to calculate the powder thermal conductivity. From this study, the thermal conductivity of a nickel alloy 625 powder in powder bed conditions is estimated to be 1.01 W/m·K at 500 °C.


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