Nuclear Fusion power plants would provide a green, safe, compact and continuous source of Energy by transforming Hydrogen isotopes into Helium. However, no solid material can handle the high temperature and particle flux released on the walls of the reactor. Consequently, the research group is working on using a liquid metal surface with a 3D printed porous Tungsten component that would host the liquid metal through capillary forces. Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a remarkable manufacturing technique used to fabricate components with near net shape. Among the various AM methods, Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) stands out as a prominent process for fabricating metallic parts. In LPBF, a high-powered laser selectively melts layers of metal powder to build the component layer by layer, achieving complex geometries with high precision and material efficiency. The micrometric melt pool involves high thermal gradient and solidification speeds. Tungsten being a refractory material, it has excellent properties for such applications, but its manufacturing using LPBF is very challenging.
To better understand and precisely optimize the scan parameters in Laser Powder Bed Fusion, a part-scale thermal model of the printing process is essential. This model will take printing parameters and the physical properties of the materials as inputs and output the thermal field distribution throughout the part during fabrication. The resulting thermal data will be used by a PhD student to simulate crystal growth in the metal surrounding the melt pool, enabling deeper insights into microstructural evolution and material performance.
Your tasks will be:
1. Conduct a literature review on numerical modeling of Laser Powder Bed Fusion Process.
2. Develop a Finite Element based thermal model.
3. To validate the model either through literature or experimental results.
4. Parametric investigation to study the influence of process parameters.
5. Suggest process parameters that enhance heat accumulation at the top layer
