Understanding the development of distortion and residual stresses in the components fabricated by the Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes is required to achieve dimensional accuracy and prevent distortion in components. An improved understanding has the potential to reduce defects and residual stresses and enhance component performance. Numerical modelling is a critical tool to estimate distortion, as experimental measurements of residual stress and distortion are expensive, time-consuming, and do not necessarily produce an optimized result. As a first step, in this work, the agglomeration method was used in combination with a time-average input of energy to simulate the macroscale evolution in temperature, the accurate prediction of which is critical to predicting the displacement field. Two example processes: 1) a laser-based powder-fed Directed Energy Deposition (DED); and 2) an Electron Beam Powder Bed Fusion (EB-PBF), are used to demonstrate the method. The approach employed focuses on ensuring heat conservation and is applied using ABAQUS. The two applications have been validated by comparing the predicted thermal behaviour with process-derived data. The results indicate that this method is an efficient strategy for predicting the thermal field at the scale of the fabricated component.

Moderated by: Steve Cockcroft / Farzaneh Farhang Mehr