Development of Advanced Material

Additive manufacturing (AM) is becoming an increasingly popular manufacturing process due to its design freedoms and material efficiency. However, the use of AM in industry is limited by the reliability of the deposited parts. Process-microstructure-property relationships are of paramount importance to increasing understanding and consistency within additive processes. Within this work, thermal and microstructure modelling methods are investigated to develop an efficient approach to the simulation of solidification microstructure. Finite element thermal models are considered alongside the implementation of analytical solutions. Cellular automata methods are utilized to simulate grain growth, while 2D models are implemented for computational efficiency. The established approach is applied to three case studies: the application to laser scans on a bare nickel superalloy substrate, followed by direct energy deposition techniques. The second study investigates the modelling approach's capability to capture changes in microstructure as a result of varying process parameters. Finally, the modelling approach is applied to functionally graded materials through in situ changes in process parameters.