Physics-Informed Machine Learning of Argon Gas-Driven Melt Pool Dynamics

Abstract

Melt pool dynamics in metal additive manufacturing (AM) is critical to process stability, microstructure formation, and final properties of the printed materials. Physics-based simulation, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD), is the dominant approach to predict melt pool dynamics. However, the physics-based simulation approaches suffer from the inherent issue of very high computational cost. This paper provides a physics-informed machine learning method by integrating the conventional neural networks with the governing physical laws to predict the melt pool dynamics, such as temperature, velocity, and pressure, without using any training data on velocity and pressure. This approach avoids solving the nonlinear Navier–Stokes equation numerically, which significantly reduces the computational cost (if including the cost of velocity data generation). The difficult-to-determine parameters' values of the governing equations can also be inferred through data-driven discovery. In addition, the physics-informed neural network (PINN) architecture has been optimized for efficient model training. The data-efficient PINN model is attributed to the extra penalty by incorporating governing PDEs, initial conditions, and boundary conditions in the PINN model.