Cellular automaton model for the simulation of laser cladding profile of metal alloys

Based on the mechanism of laser-powder interaction and droplet forming method, a cellular automaton simulation model of laser cladding layer morphology is introduced. In the model, the influences of thermophysical parameters including specific heat and thermal conductivity are taken into consideration. Meanwhile, the relationships involving laser power, scan speed and powder feed rate and the morphology parameters of the cladding layer are established. Subsequently, in order to verify the applicability and accuracy of the simulation of the cladding layer, single-track experiments of Stellite6, Ni60AA and SUS316, materials with different thermophysical properties, were carried out under different process parameters, respectively. Additionally, the stepwise method is applied to multitrack cladding experiments with different overlap to obtain morphological parameters of different tracks. The morphology of the cladding layer calculated by the model is in good agreement with the experimental results. Both of the relative errors of width and height are less than 5%, and the relative error of the cross-sectional area is less than 9%, which affirms the possibility of the model to predict the cladding morphology of different materials under different process parameters. This research can optimize process parameters and improve the forming quality of laser cladding. (c) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).