Towards an automated framework for numerical prediction of residual stresses and deformations in metal additive manufacturing

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) revolutionizes design with complex structures and customizable material properties. However, high-energy heat source utilized in metal AM creates non-uniform temperature gradients, which usually leads to significant residual stresses and deformations. The present study proposes a line source based semi-analytical thermo-mechanical approach. The accuracy of the proposed line source based model is thoroughly examined by comparing with corresponding experiments in the literature and other numerical models. Besides, an automated framework for fast construction of a thermo-mechanical FE model for the metal AM process is introduced. A numerical tool AM-builder is developed to bridge the gap between AM process parameters and the FE model. The proposed automated framework is followed by utilization of the AM-builder and the line source based model. A purely numerical example is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed automated framework in rapidly constructing AM thermo-mechanical models for various geometries.