Abstract
Directed energy deposition (DED), an additive manufacturing process, is a suitable approach for freeform production with metallic materials. By generating a melt pool with a high-power laser beam, injected material powder is contentiously laminated on a baseplate by melting and solidifying. Although all supplied powder should be molten and solidified in order to reduce the material waste, powder distribution is difficult to converge owing to turbulence around the melt pool. Furthermore, an inappropriate powder supply easily leads to sputter generation, which also increases the material waste. In this study, the gas flow under a powder nozzle was analyzed by a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation in order to achieve a high convergence in the powder supply. By measuring the powder distribution with a laser light sheet system and conducting deposition tests, the powder distribution and supply efficiency were experimentally evaluated. According to a gas-solid multiphase-flow simulation, the convergence distance of the powder flow should be shorter than the laser beam focus distance to improve the powder convergence with a lower gas-flow rate. Moreover, the powder nozzles were redesigned by taking the simulation results into consideration, and deposition tests were conducted to evaluate the powder supply efficiency, porosity rate, and penetration rate. The experimental result of the designed nozzle shows a clear improvement in the powder supply efficiency from 50.2 to 66.0%.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Schmidt M, Merklein M, Bourell D, Dimitrov D, Hausotte T, Wegener K, Overmeyer L, Vollertsen F, Levy GN (2017) CIRP annals - manufacturing technology laser based additive manufacturing in industry and academia. CIRP Ann Manuf Technol 66:561–583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cirp.2017.05.011
Dutta B, Singh V, Natu H et al (2009) Direct metal deposition. Adv Mater Process 167:33–36
Zhong C, Gasser A, Schopphoven T, Poprawe R (2015) Experimental study of porosity reduction in high deposition-rate laser material deposition. Opt Laser Technol 75:87–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optlastec.2015.06.016
Zhong C, Gasser A, Kittel J, Wissenbach K, Poprawe R (2016) Improvement of material performance of Inconel 718 formed by high deposition-rate laser metal deposition. Mater Des 98:128–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matdes.2016.03.006
Manvatkar V, De A, DebRoy T (2015) Spatial variation of melt pool geometry, peak temperature and solidification parameters during laser assisted additive manufacturing process. Mater Sci Technol 31:924–930. https://doi.org/10.1179/1743284714Y.0000000701
Lu ZL, Li DC, Lu BH, Zhang AF, Zhu GX, Pi G (2010) The prediction of the building precision in the Laser Engineered Net Shaping process using advanced networks. Opt Lasers Eng 48:519–525. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optlaseng.2010.01.002
Tan H, Zhang F, Wen R, Chen J, Huang W (2012) Experiment study of powder flow feed behavior of laser solid forming. Opt Lasers Eng 50:391–398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optlaseng.2011.10.017
Pan H, Sparks T, Thakar YD, Liou F (2006) The investigation of gravity-driven metal powder flow in coaxial nozzle for laser-aided direct metal deposition process. J Manuf Sci Eng 128:541. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.2162588
Mazzucato F, Tusacciu S, Lai M, Biamino S, Lombardi M, Valente A (2017) Monitoring approach to evaluate the performances of a new deposition nozzle solution for DED systems. Technologies 5:29. https://doi.org/10.3390/technologies5020029
Lin J (1999) Concentration mode of the powder stream in coaxial laser cladding. Opt Laser Technol 31:251–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0030-3992(99)00049-3
Zhu G, Li D, Zhang A, Tang Y (2011) Numerical simulation of metallic powder flow in a coaxial nozzle in laser direct metal deposition. Opt Laser Technol 43:106–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optlastec.2010.05.012
Balu P, Leggett P, Kovacevic R (2012) Parametric study on a coaxial multi-material powder flow in laser-based powder deposition process. J Mater Process Technol 212:1598–1610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2012.02.020
Liu H, He XL, Yu G, Wang ZB, Li SX, Zheng CY, Ning WJ (2015) Numerical simulation of powder transport behavior in laser cladding with coaxial powder feeding. Sci China Phys Mech Astron 58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-015-5705-4
Ibarra-Medina J, Pinkerton AJ (2010) A CFD model of the laser, coaxial powder stream and substrate interaction in laser cladding. Phys Procedia 5:337–346. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phpro.2010.08.060
ASTM International (2013) F2792-12a - standard terminology for additive manufacturing technologies. Rapid Manuf Assoc:10–12. https://doi.org/10.1520/F2792-12A.2
Launder BE, Spalding DB (1972) Lectures in mathematical models of turbulence. Academic Press, London
Pope SB (2000) Turbulent flows. Cambridge University Press, New York
Rumble JR (2017) CRC handbook of chemistry and physics, 98th edn. Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton
Gale WF (2004) Smithells metals reference book eighth edition. Butterworth-Heinemann, Burlington
Koike R, Misawa T, Kakinuma Y, Oda Y (2018) Basic study on remelting process to enhance density of Inconel 625 in directed energy deposition. Int J Autom Technol 12:424–433
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Takemura, S., Koike, R., Kakinuma, Y. et al. Design of powder nozzle for high resource efficiency in directed energy deposition based on computational fluid dynamics simulation. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 105, 4107–4121 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-019-03552-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-019-03552-1