Simplifications of Simulations in Additive Manufacturing: Wire Feed Additive Manufacturing on Thin Structures

Abstract: Additive Manufacturing is a relative new way of producing products and there is a need to be able to simulate this process to reduce the cost of developing a product. Today the problem is that the simulations take weeks, or even months, to finish. This means that methods to decrease the computational cost need to be investigated.
Several methods to decrease the simulation time have been presented in this work, but only one method has been investigated and that is the cyclic symmetry. This means that the model is divided into sectors and that one of them is simulated to estimate the final deformation. These simulations for cyclic symmetry show that the sector needs to be at least one eighth of a cylinder, preferably larger, to minimize the boundary effects. As the result shows the boundary effects are of almost the same size for one eighth as they are for one quarter of a cylinder. The computational time for the different sectors used in this work ranged between 1 day and 2 weeks, while the whole model was estimated to complete in a little less than 2 years. The coarse mesh for one eighth of the cylinder reduced the computational time with around 99.5% relative the full model and with 75% relative the coarse mesh for one quarter. These results are related to the geometry used in this work.
The method of using small sectors for the cyclic symmetry is most suitable during earlier stages of product development. During later stages it is important to use a larger sector and a more refined mesh to better capture the final deformation.