A flash-based thermal simulation of scanning paths in LPBF additive manufacturing

During manufacturing by Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF), the laser-scanning path influences the thermomechanical behavior of parts. Therefore, it is necessary to validate the path generation considering the thermal behavior induced by this process to improve the quality of parts. The purpose of this study is to develop an analytical thermal 3D model that allows the efficient analysis of laser trajectories in each layer. First, the proposed approach consists of applying impulse temperature excitation according to the trajectory, then summing the thermal conduction effects in the material to calculate the distribution of the temperature field in the part at each time step. The developed model is calibrated and validated by comparison with thermal results obtained by FEM software as well as experimental measurements. Numerical investigation is performed to compare different scanning path strategies on the Ti6Al4V material with different simulation parameters. The simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the approach as well as the influence of trajectories on the maximum temperature field and the distribution of thermal gradients during the manufacturing of each layer.