The well-distributed volumetric heat source model for numerical simulation of wire arc additive manufacturing process

Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) is a promising alternative to laser-powder based additive manufacturing for fabricating large metallic components due to its high productivity and low cost. The high heat input of the arc welding process causes significant thermal stresses resulting in large distortion of the components. Finite element methods are widely used to analysis arc welding and additive manufacturing process, while the commonly used Gaussian or Double ellipsoid volumetric heat source model requires a large number of mesh points suffering from computational expensive and time consuming. This paper describes the well-distributed volumetric heat source model for numerical simulation of wire arc additive manufacturing process on large components. The proposed well-distributed heat source model is insensitive to mesh, showing a significant advantage with respect to the computational time. The simulated temperature history and distribution are verified by comparison with the experimental results from thermocouples and a high-temperature thermal imaging camera.