Part-Scale Modeling in Metal Additive Manufacturing

In this project we simulate the LPBF process on the macroscopic scale of a full part. Our goal is the prediction of the thermo-mechanical response of the final part. Typical quantities of interest are the thermal field (Proell 2020), overheated regions, dimensional warping and residual stresses (Proell 2021).

In contrast to most other research groups our effort focuses on a scan-resolved simulation where the laser beam scan pattern is resolved.  The fundamental computational challenge of such part-scale simulations lies not so much in the spatial approximation. Although millions of unknowns are necessary to resolve the geometry, state-of-the-art codes and libraries are well-suited to handle this task with mesh adaptivity and parallel processing. Instead, the number of time steps necessary to simulate the complete process can easily reach into the billions. Therefore a high-performance implementation of a single step solved is essential. In this project, we developed our own simulation framework for scan-resolved simulations for parts on the centimeter to decimeter scale. This work is greatly facilitated by the open-source deal.II finite element library which we actively contribute to.