Paper 13354-25
Paper 13354-25
Powder melting efficiency during laser powder bed fusion additive manufacturing
29 January 2025 • 11:40 AM - 11:55 AM PST | Moscone South, Room 201 (Level 2)
Abstract
In the laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process, only a fraction of powders ultimately undergo full melting and contribute to the formation of the final parts. Here, we define powder melting efficiency as the ratio of the deposited track mass to the mass of powder consumed. We investigate the influence of process parameters and alloy properties on powder melting efficiency using stainless steel 316 and Ti6Al4V powders. We find that powder melting efficiency can be improved by increasing laser power or reducing scanning speed and layer thickness. Under the same process condition, Ti6Al4V alloy exhibits higher powder melting efficiency compared to stainless steel 316. Multiple powder melting efficiency maps are generated under various process conditions for two alloys. In addition, we derive a dimensionless powder melting index to represent the ratio of the volumetric energy input to the energy required to melt per unit mass powder. Both the powder melting efficiency maps and dimensionless index can help optimize process conditions for printing high-quality parts economically.
Presenter
Iowa State Univ. of Science and Technology (United States)
Dr. Yang Du is an assistant professor at Iowa State University. Before joining Iowa State University, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Texas A&M University, Princeton University, and Pennsylvania State University. She received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Tianjin University. During her Ph.D. tenure, she was selected by The China Scholarship Council as a visiting scientist at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include additive manufacturing, welding, machine learning, modeling, multi-laser powder bed fusion, residual stress, and defect reduction. Her work has been published in the Acta Materialia, npj Computational Materials, International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture, Applied Materials Today, Journal of Manufacturing Processes, Science and Technology of Welding and Joining, and Optics & Laser Technology.