Coupled Field Transient Thermo - Structural Analysis of Inhibited Sintering Process

Abstract

Proliferation in the use of digital data in manufacturing led to a new industrial revolution by virtue of which user groups and researchers from multiple industrial enterprises have introduced Rapid Prototyping (RP) into their product development processes. This paper presents a coupled field thermos-structural analysis of new RP process namely, Selective Inhibition Sintering Process (SISP) for the evaluation on the effect of temperature in various polymer materials. The present study provides information of the requirement of heat source to achieve effective sintering phenomenon. The structured Finite Element (FE) model with a dimension of 30 X 30 X 1.5 mm is considered for the analysis where in different heat quantity is applied in an iterative manner to examine the sintering temperature. Based on the simulation results, for each polymer, required amount of heat to observe sintering characteristics is evaluated. The effect of applied heat on the examination of structural aspects of polymer materials including thermal stress, distortion and displacement is carried out. The simulation results affirms that the polymer materials are within in the safe structural and thermal limit and the selection of low cost heat source will be useful for the development of cost-effective SISP system.