Reinventing Simulation for Additive Manufacturing

Re-imagining Metal Powder-Bed Processes with Simulation 
Metal powder-bed processes have been a central focus of our solution development and workflow creation efforts because it is a strategic technology for many of our customers who recognize the need to stay ahead of the manufacturing curve. Metal additive manufacturing offers the hope of producing highly customized and light-weighted primary load-bearing structures in Aerospace and Defense. It offers the possibility of osseointegration, the ability of human bone cells to attach to a metal surface, and biologically compatible orthopedic implants in the Life Sciences.

With our simulation solutions, engineers can model metal builds at a variety of scales, looking at melt-pool level effects and metal phase transformations in the research stage, and then full part-level distortion predictions in the production stage. The same model can be used for both studies by simply changing the level of discretization in both mesh size and time increment size, because we’ve decoupled the definition of the process from the definition of the finite element model. Choose the simulation fidelity that is right for your application.

Our vast nonlinear material modeling capabilities in Abaqus are used extensively to simulate complex material effects like a range of plasticity behaviors, viscoelasticity, and even damage and failure. For additive, we’ve made yet another step towards realism by developing a new material-model concept that allows us to traverse a phase diagram and predict the fractions of metal phases as a result of a metal print. This has traditionally been one of the key drivers in AM research: how do I get a handle on the material properties that result from my process? Physically building parts and testing them for their metal phase composition is highly costly. How much of that work can be replaced by a virtual model?

We live in a world of plastics. Polymer extrusion processes are sure to become a mainstay for medium and even high- volume manufacturing in the future. SIMULIA’s solutions for polymer extrusion processes are enabling engineers to innovate while benefiting from multiple methods under the polymer extrusion umbrella. We can produce models directly from CAD geometry or even use path data to run simulations on a voxel-based mesh of the build volume without the need for any CAD description whatsoever. Material orientations are accounted for automatically by reading the machine tool path.

The simulation software automatically enables the progressive addition of material according to the tool path without any requirement on the user’s end to align the finite element mesh with the tool path. It’s critical to note that we’ve decoupled the build description from the finite element mesh and that reduces the preprocessing effort to a great degree. Evolving heat transfer surfaces are automatically updated as material is deposited and elements are activated. This can be done while simulating the actual part together with support structures, providing a complete view of the process physics for realistic build analytics. Similar to material behavior modeling, we are able to simulate not only the process for part-level warpage, but also account for defects such as void generation and interlaminar failure. Simulation tools for predicting delamination and failure within Abaqus have been the mainstay of design in composites airframes for a decade now. The same solutions can be leveraged to look at defects in the layup of reinforced polymers for additive manufacturing processes. The usage of simulation doesn’t end there. Our regular capabilities for simulation will allow users to virtually study the behavior of the part in action inside assemblies and sub- assemblies with in-service loads (NVH) or extreme events (such as drop or crash).

The Future for Simulation and Additive Manufacturing 
The adoption of 3D printing will continue to rise as manufacturers strive for faster and reliable throughput from their machines. As the factories of the futures, become reality, so will the parts that roll out of these machines. We are ready to help our customers succeed in this transformation by ensuring that simulation insight can guide them all the way from concept to design and production. Please join us and our existing simulation community in this revolution.