Towards an Integrated Computational Model for Additive Manufacturing Process: Heat Source-Particle Interaction and Effective Thermal Conductivity of Powder Bed

An integrated computational modeling frame work is under development for the electron beam based additive manufacturing process to establish the fundamental correlation among material properties, process parameters and thermal and mechanical performances of the final manufactured components such as residual stresses. This paper focuses on the investigation of beam-powder interaction in mesoscale, the kinetics of the powder sintering, and the effective thermal property of the powder bed as a function of powder size distribution.