Thermal and Fluid Flow Modelling of a Heating Bed for Application in Metal AM Process

Abstract

The process of deposition in metal additive manufacturing (AM) involves layer-by-layer stacking of material in a defined fashion. The temperature and temperature gradients involved during the deposition decides the final behaviour of the fabricated component. Hence, the temperature of the substrate over which the deposition is made is of equal importance as the temperature of the processing material during deposition. To consider this aspect, a design of heating bed on which the substrate is placed is explored through numerical simulation. In this direction, a thermal and fluid flow analysis for a heating bed is performed in the presented work by adopting the finite volume method (FVM). A 3D steady analysis is carried in ANSYS atmosphere. A heating bed with a specific configuration of cooling channels is simulated, and based on the uniformity of the thermal distribution, deposition region is identified. The presented work could find its probabilistic application in the additive manufacturing, wherein substrate heating is required for isothermal deposition of every layer, so as to ensure less residual stresses and reduced distortions in the final part. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.