Thermal analysis of laser additive manufacturing of aluminium alloys: Experiment and simulation

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Laser additive manufacturing (LAM) has become increasingly popular in industry in recent decades because it enables exceptional degrees of freedom regarding the structural design of lightweight components compared to subtractive manufacturing techniques. Laser metal deposition (LMD) of wire-fed material shows in particular the advantages such as high process velocity and efficient use of material compared to other LAM processes. During wire-based LMD, the material is deposited onto a substrate and supplemented by successive layers allowing a layer-wise production of complex three-dimensional structures. Despite the increased productivity of LMD, regarding the ability to process aluminium alloys, there is still a lack in quality and reproducibility due to the inhomogeneous temperature distribution during the process, leading to undesired residual stresses, distortions and inconsistent layer geometries and poor microstructures. In this study, the aluminium alloy AA5087 as wire and AA5754 as substrate material were utilized for LMD. In order to obtain information about the temperature field during LMD, thermocouple and thermography measurements were performed during the process. The temperature measurements were used to validate a finite element model regarding the heat distribution, which will be further used to investigate the temperature field evolution over time. To consider the continuous addition of material within the FE-model, an inactive/active element approach was chosen, where initially deactivated elements are activated corresponding to the deposition of material. The first results of the simulation and the experiments show good agreement. Therefore, the model can be used in the future for LMD process optimization, e.g., in terms of minimizing local variations of the thermal load for each layer
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 21st International ESAFORM Conference on Material Forming, ESAFORM 2018 : ESAFORM 2018
EditorsGianluca Buffa, Livan Fratini, Giuseppe Ingarao, Rosa Di Lorenzo
Number of pages6
PublisherAmerican Institute of Physics Inc.
Publication date02.05.2018
Article number140004
ISBN (electronic)978-0-7354-1663-5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 02.05.2018
Event21st International Conference on Material Forming - ESAFORM 2018 - Palermo, Italy
Duration: 23.04.201825.04.2018
Conference number: 21
http://www.esaform2018.com/index.php/en/

Bibliographical note

Art.-Nr. 140004

DOI