Thermodynamically consistent microstructure prediction of additively manufactured materials

Additive manufacturing has risen to the top of research interest in advanced manufacturing in recent years due to process flexibility, achievability of geometric complexity, and the ability to locally modify and optimize materials. The present work is focused on providing an approach for incorporating thermodynamically consistent properties and microstructure evolution for non-equilibrium supercooling, as observed in additive manufacturing processes, into finite element analysis. There are two primary benefits of this work: (1) the resulting prediction is based on the material composition and (2) the nonlinear behavior caused by the thermodynamic properties of the material during the non-equilibrium solution is accounted for with extremely high resolution. The predicted temperature response and microstructure evolution for additively manufactured stainless steel 316L using standard handbook-obtained thermodynamic properties are compared with the thermodynamic properties calculated using the CALculation of PHAse Diagrams (CALPHAD) approach. Data transfer from the CALPHAD approach to finite element analysis is discussed.