Temperature thread multiscale finite element simulation of selective laser melting for the evaluation of process

Selective laser melting (SLM), one of the most widely used powder bed fusion (PBF) additive manufacturing (AM) technology, enables the fabrication of customized metallic parts with complex geometry by layer-by-layer fashion. However, SLM inherently poses several problems such as the discontinuities in the molten track and the steep temperature gradient resulting in a high degree of residual stress. To avoid such defects, this study proposes a temperature thread multiscale model of SLM for the evaluation of the process at different scales. In microscale melt pool analysis, the laser beam parameters were evaluated based on the predicted melt pool morphology to check for lack-of-fusion or keyhole defects. The analysis results at microscale were then used to build an equivalent body heat flux model to obtain the residual stress distribution and the part distortions at the macroscale (part level). To identify the source of uneven heat dissipation, a liquid lifetime contour at macroscale was investigated. The predicted distortion was also experimentally validated showing a good agreement with the experimental measurement.