Use of Detailed Particle Melt Modeling to Calculate Effective Melt Properties for Powders

Selective laser melting (SLM) is a widely used powder-based additive manufacturing process. However, it can be difficult to predict how process inputs affect the quality of parts produced. Computational modeling has been used to address some of these difficulties, but a challenge has been accurately capturing the behavior of the powder in a large, bed-scale model. In this work, a multiscale melting model is implemented to simulate the melting of powder particles for SLM. The approach employs a particle-scale model for powder melting to develop a melt fraction–temperature relationship for use in bed-scale simulations of SLM. Additionally, uncertainties from the particle-scale are propagated through the relationship to the bed scale, thus allowing particle-scale uncertainties to be included in the bed-scale uncertainty estimation. Relations, with uncertainty, are developed for the average melt fraction of the powder as a function of the average temperature of the powder. The utility of these melt fraction–temperature relations is established by using them to model phase change using a continuum bed-scale model of the SLM process. It is shown that the use of the developed relations captures partial melt behavior of the powder that a simple melting model cannot. Furthermore, the model accounts for both uncertainty in material properties and packing structure in the final melt fraction–temperature relationship, unlike simple melting models. The developed melt fraction–temperature relations may be used for bed-scale SLM simulations with uncertainty due to particle effects. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4038423]