CFD analysis in a heating bed with two inlets and one outlet cooling configuration for application in AM process

Abstract

Temperature values and its gradient are of key importance during the deposition of material in additive manufacturing process. Majorly, temperature governs the cooling and solidification rate which significantly decides the final strength of the deposited part. Heating bed application in additive manufacturing are crucial as they keep the substrate at a desired elevated temperature, helpful in providing additional heat to the incoming material to bond and fuse with the substrate and with the previously deposited layer. The presented study simulates such a heating bed with two inlets and one outlet cooling configuration using a 3D thermal and fluid flow analysis in ANSYS Fluent. A comparison is made for the heating bed without and with cooling provision for three different flow input conditions of cooling channels and based on the uniformity of the spatial distribution of temperature, a suitable condition is identified. The presented work could find its probabilistic application in the additive manufacturing, wherein elevated substrate temperature is required for deposition of quality bonding between the layers. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.