Ansys Learning Forum Forums Discuss Simulation General Mechanical scan strategy in ansys additive Reply To: scan strategy in ansys additive

John Doyle
Ansys Employee

It depends on what tool you are using and what your engineering objectives are.

If you are using WB-Mechanical to simulate Laser Powder Bed Fusion of a whole part, on a macroscopic level, material is added and heated all at once for each element layer. For current generation machines and their scan patterns, this is a reasonable assumption. The in-plane thermal effects do not contribute to the distortion as much as the build direction thermal effects. This means we do not use scan pattern information as input, directly in the structural analysis. There are options for defining Machine Scan Patterns, for the lumped layered approach, but these inputs primarily influence the transient thermal energy input and build time. See Chapter 5 of the WB-Additive Docs for more details. 5.10. Define Build Settings (ansys.com).

If you are using Additive Science to evaluate the quality of the melt pool, on a microscopic level, this is a single beam simulation. Please refer to Part 3: Additive Science Simulations (ansys.com)