Simulation of temperature distribution in single metallic powder layer for laser micro-sintering

Simulation of temperature distribution in single metallic powder layer for laser micro-sintering (LMS) using finite element analysis (FEA) has been proposed, taking into account the adoption of ANSYS μMKS system of units, the transition from powder to solid and the utilization of moving laser beam power with a Gaussian distribution. By exploiting these characteristics a more accurate model could be achieved. The effects of the process parameters, such as laser beam diameter, laser power and laser scan speed on the temperature distribution and molten pool dimensions have been preliminarily investigated. It is shown that temperature increases with the laser power and decreases with the scan speed monotonously. For the laser beam diameter during single-track, the maximum temperature of the powder bed increases with the decrease in the laser beam diameter, but far from the center of the laser beam area, the temperature increases with the laser beam diameter. The molten pool dimensions in LMS are much less than that in classical selective laser sintering (SLS) process. Both molten pool length and width decrease with the laser beam diameter and the laser scan speed, but increase with the laser power. The molten pool length is always larger than the molten pool width. Furthermore, the center of molten pool is slightly shifted for the laser multi-track.