Selective Laser Melting of Single Track on Ti–6Al–4V Powder: Experimentation and Finite Element Analysis

The present work has been carried out to establish finite element analysis (FEA) simulation of selective laser melting (SLM) process and validate through experimental results obtained on the powder bed of Ti6Al4V alloy. Process parameters included variable laser power (60–75 W) and scan speed (200–400 mm/min) along with constant parameter and the laser spot diameter of 0.45 mm. Variation in width and depth of melted track was observed through an optical microscope and was compared with FEA results. A code for a nonlinear transient model was developed in ANSYS parametric design language to simulate the process of SLM. It was observed that both the width and depth of the melt pool decrease at high scan speeds and both dimensions increase with power increase. The FEA code developed shows an average deviation of 4.5% in width and 4.65% in depth from the experimental results. The FEA model can be used to establish parameters to obtain specific dimensions of the melt pool in single line scan and optimize the process of SLM by controlling the width and depth of the melt pool.