On efficiency and effectiveness of finite volume method for thermal analysis of selective laser melting

Abstract

Purpose Selective laser melting (SLM) is a major additive manufacturing (AM) process in which laser beams are used as the heat source to melt and deposit metals in a layerwise fashion to enable the construction of components of arbitrary complexity. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for accurate and fast prediction of the temperature distribution during the SLM process. Design/methodology/approach A fast computation tool is proposed for thermal analysis of the SLM process. It is based on the finite volume method (FVM) and the quiet element method to allow the development of customized functionalities at the source level. The results obtained from the proposed FVM approach are compared against those obtained from the finite element method (FEM) using a well-established commercial software, in terms of accuracy and efficiency. Findings The results show that for simulating the SLM deposition of a cubic block with 81,000, 189,000 and 297,000 cells, the computation takes about 767, 3,041 and 7,054 min, respectively, with the FEM approach; while 174, 679 and 1,630 min with the FVM code. This represents a speedup of around 4.4x. Meanwhile, the average temperature difference between the two is below 6%, indicating good agreement between them. Originality/value The thermal field for the multi-track and multi-layer SLM process is for the first time computed by the FVM approach. This pioneering work on comparing FVM and FEM for SLM applications implies that a fast and simple computing tool for thermal analysis of the SLM process is within the reach, and it delivers comparable accuracy with significantly higher computational efficiency. The research results lay the foundation for a potentially cost-effective tool for investigating the fundamental microstructure evolution, and also optimizing the process parameters in the SLM process.

Numerical Analysis of Airflow in Trachea Affected by Thyroid Cancer Using Finite Volume Method

“…The finite volume method is a numerical method used to solve mathematical models for irregular objects that is based on integral form and the principle of conservation [17]. The Volume Method requires fewer iteration time than the FEM method [22]. This method has a high accuracy value, facilitating the numerical simulation discretization process [23].…”

Evolution, Control, and Mitigation of Residual Stresses in Additively Manufactured Metallic Materials: A Review

“…[99] While the majority of numerical studies on RS for AM are carried out based on FEM, some other simulation techniques and FEM-based derivative methods, such as finite volume method (FVM), arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE), discrete element method (DEM), and analytical method, have also been attempted. [100] In FVM, volume integrals are evaluated as fluxes at the surface of each finite volume, allowing for the formulation and d) 2D contour mapping of longitudinal RS σ x in deposit under PW (800 W, 10 Hz, 75% duty ratio). Reproduced with permission.…”

“…While the majority of numerical studies on RS for AM are carried out based on FEM, some other simulation techniques and FEM‐based derivative methods, such as finite volume method (FVM), arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE), discrete element method (DEM), and analytical method, have also been attempted. [ 100 ] In FVM, volume integrals are evaluated as fluxes at the surface of each finite volume, allowing for the formulation with unstructured meshes, so that this technique finds wide applications in the process simulation. [ 101 ] For instance, the interaction between melt pool and laser source is modeled by FVM and the stress distribution along the laser scan direction is obtained.…”

Selective laser melting: lessons from medical devices industry and other applications

“…Researchers have widely studied this approach to model phenomena such as the molten pool development (Gu et al, 2020;Hong et al, 2021a), the surface morphology in SLM (Ge et al, 2021b), the keyhole formation during the melting of Ti6Al4V (Ge et al, 2021a), the effective laser absorption variation (Ridolfi et al, 2020), the interactions between the laser beam and the powder bed (Boutaous et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2020), the influence of temperature distribution and thermal stresses on selective laser melted parts (De Baere et al, 2021;Fatoba et al, 2020;Nagesha et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2020c) and thermal anisotropy (Trejos et al, 2020). Other variations that numerically describe the thermal behavior of SLM have been published.…”