A computationally efficient thermo-mechanical model for wire arc additive manufacturing

Residual stresses and distortions are major obstacles against the more widespread application of wire arc additive manufacturing. Since the steep temperature gradients due to a moving localised heat source are inevitable in this process, accurate prediction of the thermally induced residual stresses and distortions is of paramount importance. In the present study, a computationally efficient thermo-mechanical model based on a semi-analytical thermal approach incorporating Goldak heat sources is developed for the process modelling of wire arc additive manufacturing. The semi-analytical thermal model makes use of the superposition principle, and thereby decomposes the temperature field into an analytical temperature field to account for the heat sources in a semiinfinite space and a complementary temperature field to account for the boundary conditions. Since the steep temperature gradients are captured by the analytical solution, a coarse spatial discretisation can be used for the numerical solution of the complementary T<SIC> field. Thermal evolution is coupled to an elasto-plastic mechanical boundary value problem that computes the thermal stresses and distortions. The accuracy of the proposed model is evaluated extensively by comparing the thermal and mechanical predictions with the corresponding experimental measurements as well as the simulation results obtained by a non-linear transient model from the literature. A thin wall structure with a length of 500 mm and consisting of 4 layers is modelled. The peak normal stress along the deposition direction can be predicted with less than 10% error. Furthermore, the simulations show that the part distortions are very sensitive to the boundary conditions.