Modeling and simulation of multi-material manufacturing of metals in powder bed fusion additive manufacturing

• Applicant: Professorin Dr.-Ing. Carolin Körner
• Subject Area: Metallurgical, Thermal and Thermomechanical Treatment of Materials
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 404825127

Powder bed fusion additive manufacturing technologies offer the opportunity to produce complex parts made of high performance materials. Additionally, these technologies have the potential to process different materials by new powder delivery mechanisms at once. This opens new optimization perspectives of locally adjusted material combinations which are hardly producible with conventional technologies. This proposal aims to analyze and physically model the effects during multi-material manufacturing under the special process conditions of powder bed fusion. A thermodynamic consistent model will be developed, which includes the melting behavior of different materials, the convective and diffusive mixing as well as cooling and solidification. This model will be integrated into a software, which has been developed during the last decade at our institute. The model will be experimentally verified by additively manufactured samples of different powder mixtures. At the end of the project, the software should model the main mechanisms during multi-material manufacturing of powder bed fusion processes and support the development of suitable process strategies for a dense and homogenous manufacturing.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants