Investigation of printing turn angle effects on structural deformation and stress in selective laser melting

Additive manufacturing (AM) technology facilitates the creation of complex structures, where the printing path significantly impacts thermal distribution, subsequently influencing stress distribution and structural deformation. The primary challenge in path planning is to determine a printing turn angle that ensures uniform thermal distribution, thereby minimizing structural deformation while maintaining printing efficiency. To address this issue, we propose a composite function, which comprehensively characterizes the effects of the printing turn angle and the length of the printing path on the printing results. Combining a specific cubic porous structure, we calculate the maximum (P max ) and minimum (P min ) values of the composite function P, and compare the structural deformation and stress of the P max and P min paths with those of the typical P zigzag path. Finite element method (FEM) simulation and experimental validation show that the P max path achieves significantly lower structural deformation and residual stress compared to the P zigzag path and P min path. • Investigated the relationship between printing turn angle, thermal distribution, structural deformation, and stress. • Proposed a composite function to represent the impact of printing turn angle and path length on printing results. • Guided the design of a reward function for machine learning based on recommended printing turn angles. • Validated the effectiveness of the proposed method through FEM simulation and experimental results.