Abstract
In thermal solid freeform fabrication of layered products, simultaneous quality assurance of the part geometry and material structure requires concurrent design of the process conditions with the product features. For a heat transfer analysis yielding the material structure, an analytical, distributed-parameter quasi-linear thermal model is developed and tested in scan welding. This is based on Green’s field, identified in-process by infrared temperature sensing to reflect thermal nonlinearities. Similarly, a mass transfer model of the layer surface geometry is established on an analogous concept of the material deposition field, approximated by an ellipsoidal shape and identified in-process by Laser 3D scanning of the part topology in fused deposition modeling tests. The invertibility and computational efficiency of both models provide a basis for design of adaptive feedback control strategies for the thermogeometrical characteristics of rapid prototypes.
