Modeling and simulation of cooling-induced residual stresses in heated particulate mixture depositions in additive manufacturing

One key aspect of many additive manufacturing processes is the deposition of heated mixtures of particulate materials onto surfaces, which then bond and cool, leading to complex microstructures and possible residual stresses. The overall objective of this work is to construct a straightforward computational approach that researchers in the field can easily implement and use as a numerically-efficient simulation and design tool. Specifically because multifield coupling is present, a recursive, staggered, temporally-adaptive, finite difference time domain scheme is developed to resolve the internal microstructural thermal and mechanical fields, accounting for the simultaneous elasto-plasticity and damage. The time step adaptation allows the numerical scheme to iteratively resolve the changing physical fields by refining the time-steps during phases of the process when the system is undergoing large changes on a relatively small time-scale and can also enlarge the time-steps when the processes are relatively slow. The spatial discretization grids are uniform and dense. The deposited microstructure is embedded into spatial discretization. The regular grid allows one to generate a matrix-free iterative formulation which is amenable to rapid computation and minimal memory requirements, making it ideal for laptop computation. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the approach. This formulation is useful for material scientists who seek ways to deposit such materials while simultaneously avoiding inadvertent excessive residual stresses.