My name is Nicholas
Lanuzo and for my research I worked with Dr. Amiri to research modeling a type
of additive manufacturing called Selective Laser Melting or SLM. The SLM
process works by depositing a thin layer of metallic powder onto the work
surface then, using a laser, a small portion of the powder is heated to extreme
temperatures to melt it. The molten pool of metal, or melt pool, is rapidly
cooled into a solid piece of metal. When metals are rapidly heated and cooled
it causes residual internal thermal stresses, which is detrimental to the
metals overall mechanical strength. My research currently consists of making a
numerical simulation to model the laser heating the powder, as the physics
behind this interaction are too complex to solve analytically. Once an accurate
model has been created, the heating and cooling rate can be found which will be
used analytically to find the internal stresses.
Unfortunately, due to the
pandemic my research is completely based on simulations and has no physical
experimental data. The original plan was to use the SLM process to make a
design and analyze its internal stresses and its transient temperature as it
was being created. Then, the numerical simulation would be created to match
this part. Because we can not go into the lab, we instead are basing our
numerical model off of data from literature. Now, a typical day of research
consists of making changes to the model and running it (which takes around 10
minutes) to see how it affects the overall temperature of the sample. The types
of changes to the model can be altering the material properties of the powder,
changing boundary conditions, or trying to refine the mesh for our simulation.
