Discontinuous Galerkin FEM with Hot Element Addition for the Thermal Simulation of Additive Manufacturing

Despite its promising advantages, the application of directed energy deposition (DED) to produce large metal parts is hindered by challenges inherent to the process. Undesired residual stresses, distortions and heterogeneous material properties mainly originate from a part’s thermal history. Fast part-scale thermal models therefore facilitate improved applicability of DED by enabling the prediction and mitigation of these unwanted effects. In this work, the efficiency of a discontinuous Galerkin-based thermal model with heat input by hot element addition, is evaluated and improved to allow such fast simulations. It is found that the model permits the use of a coarse discretization around the heat source, which significantly reduces simulation time while maintaining accurate solutions. It is also shown that the model naturally facilitates the use of local time stepping, which can considerably improve the efficiency of thermal additive manufacturing simulations.