Stochastic additive manufacturing simulation: from experiment to surface roughness and porosity prediction

Abstract: Deterministic computational modeling of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process fails to capture irregularities and roughness of the scan track, unless expensive powder-scale analysis is used. In this work we developed a stochastic computational modeling framework based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) capable of capturing the irregularities of LPBF scan. The model is calibrated against AFRL single track scan data using a specially designed tensor decomposition method, i.e., Higher-Order Proper Generalized Decomposition (HOPGD) that relies on non-intrusive data learning and construction of reduced order surrogate models. Once calibrated, the stochastic model can be used to predict the roughness and porosity at part scale at a significantly reduced computational cost compared to detailed powder-scale deterministic simulations. The stochastic simulation predictions are validated against AFRL multi-layer and multitrack experiments and reported as more accurate when compared with regular deterministic simulation results.