Stress and Distortion Simulation of Additive Manufacturing Process by High Performance Computing

Numerical simulation is an efficient way to better understand the thermal and mechanical evolution during metal additive manufacturing (AM) and to design and optimize the process. However, with today’s computational tools, pass-bypass thermal-mechanical numerical simulation of the metal AM process is extremely time-consuming. In this study, a new finite element code recently developed in house at Oak Ridge National Lab was used for additive manufacturing simulation. Our new code effectively utilizes GPU based high-performance computers to allow for realistic simulation of the transient thermal and mechanical response of materials during additive manufacturing. A benchmark study on a cylinder model by powder bed selective laser melting was carried out and distortion profile was compared to the experimental measurements. The accuracy and efficiency of the code was also demonstrated by analyzing a wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) model which consists of a base plate and four deposited layers.