A New and Efficient Multi-Scale Simulation Architecture for Prediction of Performance Metrics for Parts Fabricated Using Additive Manufacturing

Performance metrics for parts made using Additive Manufacturing (AM), such as inter- and intra-layer strength, are a function of the energy source, scan pattern(s) and material(s). Similarly, residual stress, surface finish and part distortion are a function of the state change of the material(s), scan pattern(s), overall geometry and post-fabrication steps.A brief overview of newly developed computational tools for metal based AM to simulate performance metrics along with their experimental validations are discussed in this paper, including five major areas of AM simulation. These five areas are: (1) thermo-mechanical constitutive relationships for process predictions during fabrication and part predictions in-service, (2) the use of Euler angles for gauging static and dynamic strengths, (3) the intelligent use of matrix algebra and homogenization to extract the spatiotemporal nature of AM processes, (4) a fast GPU architecture and (5) agorithms targeted towards attaining an accurate faster than real-time simulation efficiency.