Thermal Modeling of Powder-Based Additive Manufacturing Processes Using the Discrete Element Method

Selective laser sintering (SLS) is a highly utilized powder-based additive manufacturing technology that is capable of producing 3D components with intricate geometries. The materials used for SLS are generally discrete and granular. Powder materials exhibit discontinuous behavior of the medium, which is difficult to model using conventional computational methods based on continuous methods such as the finite element method (FEM) or the finite difference (FD) method. This article introduces a thermomechanical modeling framework based on the discrete element method (DEM) for the SLS process. This framework depicts the material discontinuity inherent in the SLS process and models the physical interactions between particles when subjected to a laser source. The DEM framework was primarily implemented using polyamide 12 powder sintered with a 0.6 W laser to examine the temperature evolution of the particles at the simulated sample center. The simulation findings were compared with experimental tests and showed excellent agreement, indicating DEM’s efficacy and suitability for modeling the SLS process.