Modeling the Effect of Beam Shaping at Selective Laser Melting

The influence of the laser-beam radial distribution of the energy flux density is theoretically studied for the Gaussian distribution (mode TEM00), and doughnut distribution of TEM01* mode for the values of the Peclet number from 0 to 3. The model of linear thermal conduction in the target indicates that profile TEM00 is the best for thermo-activated treatment processes that can be accomplished in a wide temperature range and profile TEM01* can be advantageous for a narrow range of the permissible processing temperature. If the phase transitions of melting/solidification and evaporation are included into the model, the estimate of the width of the laser-treated band is reduced but the tendencies predicted by the linear model are not changed.