SIMULATION TOOL FOR MATERIAL BEHAVIOUR PREDICTION IN ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Abstract

The application of simulation tools plays an important role not only in terms of understanding the processes taking place in the production and the possibility to prevent failures, but ultimately, and most importantly, to optimize the production process. Thus, simulation tools should be able to work with many input parameters and process them in such a way that the data obtained in the form of simulation outputs are as close as possible to the real conditions taking place in a production process. Metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) represents one of the processes in which many parameters influence the final quality of the part and its properties. Supports, traditionally used in Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) techniques, and their relative volumes are also of great importance, since their reduction plays an important role in terms of cost-effectiveness, which can be increased by minimizing the support structures. The aim of this paper is the numerical simulation in the Simufact Additive software, which can handle the input parameters of the metal AM process and, most importantly, to present an additive tool for support optimization. Two simulation analyses with the same input parameters were performed, comparing each other the support material distribution, volume fraction or shape deviation with respect to the conventional support generation method and the function allowing the support generation by means of the optimization mode. A lower variation in the shape of the part, in its volume fraction, in the density of the generated support structures as well as in the spacing of the generated support structure was achieved by using the support generation optimization mode.