Investigation of the Thermo-Mechanical Modeling of the Manufacturing of Large-Scale Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing Components with an Outlook Towards Industrial Applications

The simulation of additive manufacturing processes, such as Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM), is becoming increasingly important to predict material and component properties in advance of the real-life manufacturing. In contrast to prior work focusing on the simulation of simplified WAAM parts, this paper presents an investigation into the thermo-mechanical finite element (FE) simulation of the manufacturing of large-scale WAAM components. The investigation focuses on various problems within the individual steps of the FE workflow wherein ABAQUS influences the modeling of large-scale components. The investigations are founded upon a thermo-mechanically coupled FE model in ABAQUS 2020. For this purpose, several thermo-mechanical simulation models are set up with the target of investigating the meshing, element activation and variation of process parameters. Appropriate discretization of WAAM components is found to be a major problem when setting up a simulation. The meshing of the component is limited by the element type and size and the meshing routines used. Also, differences in the axes of motion for the simulation and the real process cause the simulation to differ from reality. High element start temperatures are found to be beneficial for simulation stability and performance. An integrated parameter variation was made possible with the modeling techniques used.