Simulating heat flux in additive manufacturing

Inventors

Yavari, Reza • Rao, Prahalada Krishna • Cole, Kevin

Assignees

NuTech Ventures Inc

Abstract

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for simulating heat transfer in additive manufacturing. Implementations disclosed herein convert a model of an object into a node representation of the object, and generate an adjacency matrix of the object based on the node representation. For each layer of nodes in the node representation, implementations apply a simulated heat to the layer of nodes, and estimating a diffusion of heat to other nodes based on the adjacency matrix. Implementations generate a representation of an estimated heat distribution within the object.

Core Innovation

The invention models heat transfer during additive manufacturing by converting a model of an object into a three-dimensional node representation of the object, where the node representation includes one or more layers of nodes and each layer corresponds to a layer of material to be added. An adjacency matrix is generated using distances between nodes in the node representation, with the adjacency matrix representing each of the one or more layers of nodes. Heat transfer is represented over a graph of nodes rather than using a conventional discretization of the object geometry.

The method simulates an additive manufacturing process layer-by-layer by applying simulated heat to the layer of the adjacency matrix and estimating, using the adjacency matrix, a diffusion of heat to other nodes based on the applied simulated heat. From these operations, the method generates a representation of an estimated heat distribution within the object. The heat distribution representation includes a heat flux representation and produces heat/heat-flux maps.

A graph-theoretic formulation is used to derive heat diffusion dynamics and to enable efficient generation of estimated heat distribution representations for additive manufacturing. The heat simulation avoids meshing and reduces computational cost relative to finite element analysis. The partial content describes validation and accuracy comparisons using analytical and finite element tests, including error measures and trend agreement.

Claims Coverage

Across the provided independent claims, the core coverage uses a layered three-dimensional node representation, an adjacency matrix generated from node distances, and a layer-by-layer heat diffusion simulation that outputs a representation of an estimated heat distribution. The inventive features focus on four elements.

The independent claim set consistently covers a simulation pipeline that converts an object model into layered node representations, builds an adjacency matrix from distances between nodes, applies simulated heat to each node-layer, estimates diffusion of heat across the adjacency matrix, and outputs a representation of the estimated heat distribution within the object.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications