Additive manufacturing methods and/or 3D printing have become increasingly popular with a particular emphasis on methods used for metallic materials. Selective Laser Melting (SLM) process is one of the additive manufacturing methods for production of metallic parts. The method was developed in particular to process metal parts that need to be more than 99 percent dense. In this method, according to a predefined pattern, the top surface of the powder layer is scanned by the laser and a local (selective) melt pool is produced in the place of the laser spot which results in a fully dense layer after solidification. In this study, a semi-coupled thermo-mechanical simulation of SLM process is carried out in ABAQUS finite element software. In order to simulate the moving heat flux and update material properties from the powder to the dense solid, the ability of the software for employing user-defined subroutines is employed. Investigation of the residual stress distribution and distortion of a part built using SLM process are the main objectives of this simulation. Results which are presented for two different mechanical boundary conditions show that when the bottom face of the layer is clamped, the top face of the built layer deforms in a concave shape, while the lateral faces of the layer have simply-supported boundary conditions and the bottom face of the layer is free, the part is warped.

Keywords: Additive Manufacturing, Selective laser melting process, Finite element simulation, Support conditions, Thermal residual stresses

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