Numerical modeling for thermal evaluation of scanning patterns in directed energy deposition of curved surface components

Directed Energy Deposition (DED) technology can precisely deposit and form metal materials, satisfying the manufacturing requirements of complex curved surface components. Controlling the heat distribution in the deposition area during continuous deposition is crucial to ensure the forming quality. However, previous experimental studies suffered from the problems of high manual cost. In this paper, a numerical modeling method supporting free-path deposition for robot-assisted metal DED processes was developed, which can efficiently and accurately predict the thermal field evolution during the DED manufacturing of curved surface components. The model is built based on real physical scenarios and integrates relevant process parameters, highly restoring the dynamic deposition process of metals. The accuracy of the prediction results was verified by comparing with an infrared thermal image camera on a curved surface component deposition. The study carried out parallel multi-track deposition experiments on cylindrical substrates under three laser scanning patterns, and analyzed the results through the corresponding numerical models. The results show that the established numerical model can provide assistance for evaluating the process strategies of curved surface components DED.