A Computational Efficient Approach to Compute Temperature for Energy Beam Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

Temperature history prediction is essential for a better understanding of the relationship between microstructural change and processing conditions for energy beam additive manufacturing fabricated components. Here, a new efficient approach combining a moving heat source analytical model with a melting and solidification model is presented. An innovative method is proposed to compute the “effective computation zone” as a boundary condition, which can save computation time significantly. Notably, the computational efficiency can improve by 104–105 compared with finite element models. With this range of improvement efficiency, the temperature predicted based on this method is consistent (around 9% of average deviation) with experimental measurements by the thermocouple. This model can be used as a reference to define the boundary condition for further complex numerical analysis with improved accuracy at a reduction of efficiency as desired. In addition, it can be used as a reference to determine processing conditions that would allow the efficient and effective control of the temperature history within a range for a certain microstructure design.