Reduced order modeling of selective laser melting: from calibration to parametric part distortion

Abstract Additive manufacturing is an appealing solution to produce geometrically complex parts, difficult to manufacture using traditional technologies. The extreme process conditions, in particular the high temperature, complex interactions and couplings, and rich metallurgical transformations that this process entails, are at the origin of numerous process defects. Therefore, the numerical simulation of the process is gaining the interest of both the scientific and the industrial communities. However, simulating that process demands impressive computational resources, limiting high resolution simulations to the microscopic and mesoscopic scales. This paper proposes a thermo-mechanical modeling framework at the process scale as well as its associated reduced order simulation counterpart, enabling the parametric evaluation of the part distortion. It deeply addresses the process calibration using a high-resolution computational procedure based on the use of an in-plane-out-of-plane separated representation at the heart of the so-called Proper Generalized Decomposition (PGD), as well as the analysis of the transient thermal effects, defining the conditions in which the thermal and mechanical analyses can be decoupled.