Prediction of Melt Pool Dimension, Porosity Generation and Thermal Behavior of Ti-6Al-4V during Powder Bed Fusion at Various Scan Speeds and Laser Powers

Abstract

The additive manufacturing technology called laser powder bed fusion enables to manufacture complex parts based on the fusion of a metallic powder layer by layer. In laser powder bed fusion, the produced component quality relies significantly on the parameters of the process. In this study, the powder titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V is employed for the purpose of predicting the melt pool dimensions. To manufacture a single bead, several combinations of scan speed and laser power are used. This research studies the influence of the scan speed and the laser power on the melt pool dimensions and on the thermal history of a specified layer of powder. The results reveal that the geometry of the melt pool is considerably responsive to the scan speed and the laser power. Furthermore, unfavorable effects such as porosity defects are analyzed in detail. Suggestions are presented to employ optimal settings to prevent these undesirable outcomes. To validate the numerical results, a comparison with experimental results from the literature is carried out. Our numerical analysis proves a satisfactory correlation with the experimental investigations. The beam power and the scanning speed effects on the average temperature of the desired layers are discussed as well.