Rapid, Low Cost, High-quality Component Qualification Using Multi-scale, Multi-physics Analytical Toolset for the Optimization of Metal Additive Manuf

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is of increasing interest for production of complex geometries and high-performance components for the DoD due to its advantage of design freedom and as-needed production capability. Components of interest to the Navy have a high standard in porosity, surface finish, mechanical properties and dimensional tolerance, etc. However, mechanical properties and part quality variability issues inherent to AM make rapid qualification of metal AM parts difficult. AM processes rely heavily on trial and error experiments for part qualification which is time and cost consuming, and without guarantee of optimized process parameters. 3DSIM is in the process of commercializing AM predictive modeling products capable of predicting thermal histories, residual stress, support structure design and part qualities such as porosity, surface finish, dimensional tolerance and distortion, etc. for metal AM processes. To address Phase I objectives, an analytical software toolset will be developed with integration of new AM part quality optimization algorithms which take into account one or several process parameters and intersection of others. 3DSIM proposes to add the capability of optimizing AM process parameters to enable rapid, low cost, high quality component qualification as the missing link for using predictive modeling in a streamlined qualification environment.