Modeling and simulation of the temperature field of selective laser sintering

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is a kind of powder-bed additive manufacturing technology, which can directly shape parts with complex geometry. The heat transfer process has an important influence on the forming quality of the SLS process. Computational methods are useful to study the heat transfer in the process since the temporal and spatial scale is extremely tiny. This paper presented a model, coupling the discrete element method and heat transfer equations, to calculate the powder-applying and heat-transfer phenomenon. Firstly, the discrete element method and the basic framework of the heat pipe model were introduced, and then the process of manufacturing a mini propeller blade by SLS was simulated.