Large-scale microstructure modelling of an additively manufactured part using cellular automata

Abstract

This study represents the first attempt, to our knowledge, to simulate the grain structure of a laser powder bed fusion printed metal part exceeding 1,000 mm³ in volume using a workstation. Utilising our in-house cellular automata finite difference code with OpenMP for parallelisation, the model predictions closely align with experimental observations. The implemented model shows promising capabilities for estimating microstructures with reasonable accuracy and could serve as a powerful tool for digital manufacturing.