Computational and Experimental Investigation of Inert Gas Flow Field in Direct Metal Laser Melting Printer Build Chambe

Additive manufacturing methods are becoming more and more popular in today’s production market. These methods became a useful and flexible alternative to traditional manufacturing approach. One of the most popular methods in this family is Direct Metal Laser Melting. It can achieve high quality prints, however, numerous parameters need to be established, to achieve a good quality product. One of the aspects of printing process is inert gas flow. The goal of presented study is to quantitatively assess inert gas flow field using both experimental and numerical methods. Flow field parameters have been measured with anemometry and Particle Image Velocimetry. Additionally Computational Fluid Dynamics tools were used to investigate flow phenomena occurring inside the build chamber. PIV measurements give good insight into the flow field, but they are costly and require significant time for preparation. For this reason, CFD analysis is widely used as a design tool, giving reasonable turnaround time. In addition, every design tool to be reliable need to be validated against test data. In this study the team was able to collect both experimental and numerical data and finally conduct the validation. Work allowed to determine the most suitable approach for predictions in given problem. Different turbulence models have been tested. Simulation results were validated against collected experimental data.

---

Opracowanie rekordu ze środków MNiSW, umowa nr SONP/SP/546092/2022 w ramach programu "Społeczna odpowiedzialność nauki" - moduł: Popularyzacja nauki i promocja sportu (2024).