Research on Laser Sintering Powder Bed Model: Analysis of the Effects of Laser Power and Scanning Speed on the Sintering Pool

Abstract By combining numerical simulation and experimental testing, the powder bed model was imported into the discrete element software Flow-3D as the initial model to analyze the melting, flow, and solidification processes of powder particles. The study examined the effects of different laser powers, scanning speeds, and energy densities on single-track sintering paths and temperature fields. It described the characteristics of stable, metastable, and unstable sintering pools and discussed the impact of different laser power levels and various parameter combinations at the same energy density on the width and depth of the sintering pool.. It was found that when the laser power is 10W and the scanning speed increases from 1400mm/s to 2200mm/s, the sintering path morphology deteriorates from a stable to a semi-molten state. At a scanning speed of 2000mm/s, as the laser power increases from 8W to 14W, the width and depth of the sintering pool increase. When the laser energy density is constant at 10J/m, there are significant differences in the sintering path formation under different laser power and scanning speed combinations, with the width of the sintering pool increasing as the laser power and scanning speed increase.