A numerical study on the thermal transient model with moving laser heat source of AISI 304 stainless steel plate

Laser beam is commonly used as a moving heat source in various metal processing such as cutting, heat treatment, welding, and recently in additive manufacturing or metal 3D-printing. Understanding of thermal behavior resulting from a moving laser beam are essential to control the product quality in those processes. This research aims to study the 3D thermal transient model of moving laser heat source with changeable direction of motion in order to investigate the effect of process parameters, e.g., power intensity, scanning speed and hatch spacing on the temperature distribution of the AISI 304 stainless steel plate. The numerical study is carried out using the commercial software ANSYS 18.1 and considering the simulation of the low intensity laser heat flux with Gaussian intensity distribution. The results of temperature profile at the probe point from numerical simulation are in agreement with the experiment results. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.