Flow Characteristics of Porous Metal Structures for Specified Permeability Manufactured by Laser Beam Melting Technology

Abstract

The characteristic additive build-up at the laser beam melting technology provides the opportunity to freeform porous and defined structures at specific areas in one part. By adjusting the process parameters specific characteristics of the manufactured part such as density, permeability, pore size, porosity and shear strength can be realized. The manufacturing process of a test body is described in detail. The permeability of the manufactured parts is investigated experimentally. In addition a numerical model is build and the flow structure inside of the test body is illustrated. The numerically obtained results are compared to the experimentally obtained results. To show the advantages of this technology for future applications a numerical model of a porous blade surrounded by a hot gas flow and cooled from inside of the porous structure is investigated. The results show that the method to define the characteristics during the laser beam melting process has to be optimized.