Seamless heat transfer analysis for part scale laser powder bed fusion by harnessing the computer-aided design model with an analytical thermal model

Part-scale laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) involves the deposition of several thousands of overlapping tracks and successive layers with diverse scanning strategies. Computer-based simulation of temperature field for part-scale LPBF is in ever demand but has remained a challenging task. A unique approach is presented here to harness a computer-aided design (CAD) model with a three-dimensional analytical heat transfer model for rapid seamless computation of the part-scale temperature field. The framework is tested to simulate temperature field for LPBF of Hastelloy X with diverse scanning strategies. The proposed approach provides a novel recourse to analyse part-scale LPBF directly from a CAD model thereby offering a substantive process design tool.