Efficiency and Accuracy in Thermal Simulation of Powder Bed Fusion of Bulk Metallic Glass

Abstract

Additive manufacturing by powder bed fusion processes can be utilized to create bulk metallic glass as the process yields considerably high cooling rates. However, there is a risk that reheated material set in layers may become devitrified, i.e., crystallize. Therefore, it is advantageous to simulate the process to fully comprehend it and design it to avoid the aforementioned risk. However, a detailed simulation is computationally demanding. It is necessary to increase the computational speed while maintaining accuracy of the computed temperature field in critical regions. The current study evaluates a few approaches based on temporal reduction to achieve this. It is found that the evaluated approaches save a lot of time and accurately predict the temperature history.