DoE Applied to Thermal Analysis and Simulation of Geometrical Stability of a Wind Turbine Blade Made by Selective Laser Melting

摘要

The Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is one of the most demanding additive manufacturing (AM) processes, although it assures some superior advantages in producing complex structural components and applies to a wide range of materials. The control of SLM parameters is crucial to guarantee the quality of manufactured component. The steep thermal variation in part during the SLM process induces some undesired effects, such as warping, residual thermal stresses and micro-cracks, as well as geometrical instability. Effectively predicting the influence of process parameters upon the product quality of part made by SLM is extremely useful in the earliest steps of design, especially when a higher productivity is required. Particularly, thermal simulation is used to suitably calibrate some process parameters, to improve efficiency and reduce defects. Besides, such simulation is exploited to improve the heat transfer between the bed and the first product layer, to reduce thermal stress and the overall product deformation. This study exemplifies how numerical modeling of temperature distribution in a wind turbine blade made by SLM allows predicting the dimensional stability. The Design of Experiments (DoE) and ANOVA analysis helped in studying effects on the product geometric stability and deformation, of some process parameters, as powder layer thickness, hatch space and laser scan speed.