Thermo-mechanical simulations of selective laser melting for AlSi10Mg alloy to predict the part-scale deformations

Abstract

Selective laser melting (SLM) is one of the most frequently employed metal additive manufacturing methods. Various industries such as aerospace, automotive, biomedical, and tooling utilize SLM parts. Although it has a wide scope of applications, it demands a thorough understanding to supply reliable parts. Thus, process simulations are key methods to optimize the process and to shorten the product development time. SLM allows manufacturing of steel, nickel, cobalt, chromium, titanium, and aluminum alloy parts. Aluminum alloys are one of the most common materials processed in the manufacturing industry, and AlSi10Mg is one of the SLM-compatible alloys which requires further understanding. This study focuses on AlSi10Mg alloy SLM simulations to predict the part deformations accurately. The proposed material properties of cast AlSi10Mg alloy simulations closely agreed with the experimental results, and this specific model is expected to aid design engineers to fabricate their parts with better consistency.