Parametric simulations for residual stresses and distortions of inconel 625 fabricated by laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing

Developments related to the laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) expanded the application area of the additive manufacturing (AM) for metal alloys, and increased the variety of machines and materials. On the other hand, this increase exposed the need for process development to adapt new materials and shapes with acceptable metallurgical, mechanical and geometrical attributes. In recent years, researchers have sought to reduce the development costs by decreasing these process development needs for some requirements. Among these, modeling and simulations for residual stresses and distortions are common practices. Dedicated software for these applications provided remarkable savings in computational times. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to pay attention to finite element-based software, due to the fact that they work as black box systems. This study provides an in-depth investigation of Simufact Additive software based on L-PBF of Inconel 625 alloy. In this regard, thermo-mechanical simulations were performed by comparing the results with experimental data. Simulation set-ups were fine-tuned according to comparisons, and parametric analyses were conducted. The laser power and scanning speed were found to be the most influential parameters on the resulting residual stresses.