Efficient thermomechanical modelling of Laser Powder Bed Fusion additive manufacturing process with emphasis on parts residual stress fields

Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) process is one of the advanced Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes, which is employed for the fabrication of complex metallic components. One of the major drawbacks of the LPBF is the development of residual stresses due to the high temperature gradients developed during the process thermal cycles. Reliable models for the prediction of residual strain and stress at part scale are required to support the LPBF process optimization. Due to the computational cost of the LPBF simulation, the current modelling methodology utilizes assumptions to make feasible the prediction of residual stresses at parts or component level. To this scope, a thermomechanical modelling approach for the simulation of LPBF process is presented with focus to residual stress and strain prediction. The modelling efficiency of the proposed approach was tested on a series on cases for which experimental data were available. The good comparison between the predicted and experimental data validated the modelling method. The efficiency of the thermomechanical modelling method is demonstrated by the reduced computational time required.