Investigation of Melt Pool Thermo-hydrodynamic Behaviour inLaser Beam Welding ofTi-6Al-4V through Numerical Simulation

Abstract: Laser is an efficient and widely used heat source in metal processing suchas welding and additive manufacturing. It has some great advantages compared to the other conventional heat sources like electron beam and arc namely: ability of handling complicated joint geometries and producing large components. Laser beam welding encompasses many complex physical phenomena such asheat transfer, metal melting, flow and solidification, free surface deformation, evaporation and possibly vaporization. The aim of this research work istwo-fold: gain deeper process understanding and improve the model reliability. Deeper process understanding is sought on the effect of beam shaping on themelt pool. To achieve improved model reliability, a good support consists in using qualitative experimental data representing the process. Thus, 3D validation of the melt pool geometry is performed while it was usually 2D inprevious research works. Furthermore, a new calculation procedure for laser absorption is introduced. To conduct this research work, a Computational Fluid Dynamics approach is used. A solver, capable of tracking the deformation of the melt free surface, is developed in OpenFOAM. Concerning beam shaping, it is found that not only the melt pool size as previously known but also the melt flow pattern is modified through elongating the beam shape.This last result could not be revealed by former studies as the non-transparent media hinders optical observation. New in-process quantitative measurements performed by a project partner are used to test the model. Weaknesses of the former absorptivity models are highlighted, as well as the limitations of the proposed model. Finally, the results show that the proposed absorptivity model function of local surface conditions leads to much better agreement with experimental results compared to the former constant absorptivity model. The maximum discrepancy compared to the experimental measurement, which is observed for the melt pool depth, can indeed be reduced to about 10%.