Localized Preheating Approaches for Reducing Residual Stress in Additive Manufacturing

Uniform preheating can be used to limit residual stress in the solid freeform fabrication of relatively small parts. However, in additive manufacturing processes, where a feature is deposited onto a much larger part, uniform preheating of the entire assembly is typically not practical. This paper considers localized preheating to reduce residual stresses, building on previous work using a defined thermal gradient through the part depth as a metric for predicting maximum final residual stress. The building of thinwalled structures is considered. Two types of localized preheating approaches are compared, appropriate for use in laser- or electron beam-based additive manufacturing processes. In evaluating the effectiveness of each approach, a simplified thermomechanical model is used that can be related directly to analytical thermomechanical models for thermal stresses in unconstrained thin plates. Results are presented showing that one of the methods yields temperature profiles likely to yield reduced residual stresses at room temperature. Mechanical model results confirm this, showing a significant reduction in maximum stress values. A more complete thermomechanical simulation of thin wall fabrication is used to verify the trends seen in the simplified model results.