Stress and temperature distribution simulation for arc weld-based rapid prototyping of titanium alloy TC4

摘要

Weld-based rapid prototyping is an inexpensive manufacturing technology, which is being developed based on the layered manufacturing technique to shape metal parts along predefined paths. Temperature and its induced stresses usually decide the properties of deposited metals. In this paper, the thermal and stress distributions in a single-pass, multi-layer weld-based rapid prototyping of titanium alloy TC4 were examined by numerical simulation. The results showed that the peak values of the temperature for a single thermal cycle in a deposited layer, gradually decreased with the increase in the number of deposited layers. The accumulation of heat was identified from the comparative analysis of peak values of temperature for different deposited layers in the same thermal cycle. The peak temperature of the layers deposited at the last, increased initially, which then stabilized due to the accumulation of heat from the earlier deposited layers. Preheating treatment effectively reduced the internal stress of the deposited part thereby making the stress distribution uniform. It was observed that the rear layer had a re-melting or post-heating effect on the front layer, relaxing the stress of the stacking part to a certain extent.