Numerical Modeling of Metal-Based Additive Manufacturing Process Using Level Set Methods

Modern computer technology enables people to simulate additive manufacturing (AM) process at high fidelity, which has proven to be an effective way to analyze, predict, and design the AM processes. In this paper, a new method is proposed to simulate the melting process of metal powder based AM. The physics is described using partial differential equations for heat transfer and Laminar flow. The level set methods are employed to track the motion of free surface between liquid and solid phases. The issues, including free surface evolution, phase changes, and velocity field calculation are investigated. The convergence problem is examined in order to improve the efficiency of solving this multiphysics problem.