Heat source model calibration for thermal analysis of laser powder-bed fusion

Laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF) is one of the mainstream additive manufacturing (AM) processes, which has dominated the metal AM manufacturing market. LPBF has the capability to manufacture complex parts, which pose a manufacturing challenge by conventional methods. In this paper, an efficient numerical-experimental approach has been introduced to calibrate the parameters of a proposed three-dimensional (3D) conical Gaussian moving laser heat source model. For this purpose, several Hastelloy X single tracks are printed with various process parameters. The melt pool depth and width were measured experimentally, and results were used to calibrate and validate the heat source model. An empirical relationship between heat source parameters and laser energy density was also proposed. In addition, temperature gradients and cooling rates around the melt pool were extracted from the numerical model to be used towards microstructure prediction. Estimated microstructure cell spacing, calculated based on predicted cooling rate during solidification, was in good agreement with experimental measurements, indicating the validity of the heat source model.