Numerical Simulation of Moving Heat Flux during Selective Laser Melting of AlSi25Alloy Powder

A single-layer three-dimensional model was created to simulate multi-channel scanning of AlSi(25)powder in selective laser melting (SLM) by the finite element method. Thermal behaviors of laser power and scanning speed in the procedure of SLM AlSi(25)powder were studied. With the increase of laser power, the maximum temperature, size and cooling rate of the molten pool increase, while the scanning speed decreases. For an expected SLM process, a perfect molten pool can be generated using process parameters of laser power of 180 W and a scanning speed of 200 mm/s. The pool is greater than the width of the scanning interval, the depth of the molten pool is close to scan powder layer thickness, the temperature of the molten pool is higher than the melting point temperature of the powder and the parameters of the width and depth are the highest. To confirm the accuracy of the simulation results of forecasting excellent process parameters, the SLM experiment of forming AlSi(25)powder was carried out. The surface morphology of the printed sample is intact without holes and defects, and a satisfactory metallurgical bond between adjacent scanning channels and adjacent scanning layers was achieved. Therefore, the development of numerical simulation in this paper provides an effective method to obtain the best process parameters, which can be used as a choice to further improve SLM process parameters. In the future, metallographic technology can also be implemented to obtain the width-to-depth ratio of the SLM sample molten pool, enhancing the connection between experiment and theory.