A Comparison of Layered Tetrahedral and Cartesian meshing in Additive Manufacturing Simulation

In additive manufacturing simulation most of the time the overall aim is to compensate residual stress induced deformations of a printed part. For this goal a high result accuracy is needed. In order to achieve this, simulation engineers have to take numerous decisions. This article provides assistance in the determination of a reasonable meshing type using a complex to mesh test sample that is close to the real geometry of round metallic fatigue test samples. The traditional Cartesian meshing strategy with and without the use of a projection factor is compared with layered tetrahedral meshing, which is newly introduced to additive manufacturing simulation. Additionally the displacement results are set side by side with a scan of an additive manufactured part. The study shows that layered tetrahedral meshing can achieve more accurate results with coarser mesh sizes, especially in regions of high curvature.