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Fundamentals of radiation heat transfer in AlSi10Mg powder bed during selective laser melting

Pei Wei (The State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China)
Zhengying Wei (The State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China)
Zhne Chen (The State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China)
Jun Du (The State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China)
Yuyang He (The State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China)
Junfeng Li (The State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China)

Rapid Prototyping Journal

ISSN: 1355-2546

Article publication date: 26 October 2018

Issue publication date: 17 October 2019

343

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to study numerically the influence of the applied laser energy density and the porosity of the powder bed on the thermal behavior of the melt and the resultant instability of the liquid track.

Design/methodology/approach

A three-dimensional model was proposed to predict local powder melting process. The model accounts for heat transfer, melting, solidification and evaporation in granular system at particle scale. The proposed model has been proved to be a good approach for the simulation of the laser melting process.

Findings

The results shows that the applied laser energy density has a significantly influence on the shape of the molten pool and the local thermal properties. The relative low or high input laser energy density has the main negative impact on the stability of the scan track. Decreasing the porosity of the powder bed lowers the heat dissipation in the downward direction, resulting in a shallower melt pool, whereas pushing results in improvement in liquid track quality.

Originality/value

The randomly packed powder bed is calculated using discrete element method. The powder particle information including particle size distribution and packing density is taken into account in placement of individual particles. The effect of volumetric shrinkage and evaporation is considered in numerical model.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The research is supported by Science Challenge Project TZ2018006-0301-01 and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the national key special research and development project under Grant No. 2016YFB1100400.

Citation

Wei, P., Wei, Z., Chen, Z., Du, J., He, Y. and Li, J. (2019), "Fundamentals of radiation heat transfer in AlSi10Mg powder bed during selective laser melting", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 25 No. 9, pp. 1506-1515. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-11-2016-0189

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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