Particle Finite Element Method for simulations of Selective Laser Melting with vaporization

The purpose of this work is the simulation of selective laser melting processes. Such pro-
cesses involve multiple physical phenomena that need to be taken into account altogether
such as thermo-mechanical coupling, solid-liquid-solid phase change, surface tension and
vaporization [Cook et al., 2020]. The variety of different physical phenomena, as well as the presence of a
highly deformed fluid free surface, implies multiple constraints on the required numerical
procedure. Notably, the need to compute the free surface position and curvature leads to
complex interface tracking algorithms in the widely-used Eulerian-based models [Chen, 2018]. The
Particle Finite Element Method (PFEM), a Lagrangian method with fast triangulation
and boundary identification algorithms, has been chosen to overcome some of the diffi-
culties mentioned previously [Février, 2020]. A new version of the 2D/3D PFEM code presented in
[Février, 2020 ; Cerquaglia 2019] has been developed to take into account the aforementioned physical phenomena,
notably Marangoni forces and recoil pressure, and the interactions with a laser. Alongside
the presentation of the mathematical formulation and the description of its numerical im-
plementation, some simulations involving a moving laser melting a block of material are
presented and discussed.