Direct Simulation of Polymer Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) - An Implementation of the Multi-Phase Viscoelastic Solver in OpenFOAM

Among the many mature and commercial AM technologies, fused deposition modeling (FDM) is a popular technology commonly used for modeling, prototyping, and production applications. In this process, a filament thermoplastic material is fed into a liquefier chamber, melted to a liquid state, and deposited layer by layer through a nozzle to form the 3D part. As a result, part can be designed in a more freedom way, and fabricated quickly and rapidly to a desired shape. However, different combination of processing parameters may influence the final part quality greatly, which hinders wider application of this technique. In order to investigate the influence of processing parameters on the final part quality, a viscoelastic multi-phase solver is developed, with capability for dynamic meshing and based on OpenFOAM. The solver directly simulates the deposition process of FDM. By implementing this solver for different boundary conditions and geometry, we can evaluate the printed part quality for varied processing conditions. More importantly, the tool enables efficient optimization of the processing conditions for specified material parameters and desired print quality.