Powder bed fusion processes are additive manufacturing technologies that are expected to induce the third industrial revolution. Components are built up layer by layer in a powder bed by selectively melting confined areas, according to sliced 3D model data. This technique allows for manufacturing of highly complex geometries hardly machinable with conventional technologies. However, the underlying physical phenomena are sparsely understood and difficult to observe during processing. Therefore, an intensive and expensive trial-and-error principle is applied to produce components with the desired dimensional accuracy, material characteristics, and mechanical properties. This review presents numerical modeling approaches on multiple length scales and timescales to describe different aspects of powder bed fusion processes. In combination with tailored experiments, the numerical results enlarge the process understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms and support the development of suitable process strategies and component topologies.

The resulting properties of parts fabricated by powder bed fusion additive manufacturing processes are determined by their porosity, local composition, and microstructure. The objective of this work is to examine the influence of the stochastic powder bed on the process window for dense parts by means of numerical simulation. The investigations demonstrate the unique capability of simulating macroscopic domains in the range of millimeters with a mesoscopic approach, which resolves the powder bed and the hydrodynamics of the melt pool. A simulated process window reveals the influence of the stochastic powder layer. The numerical results are verified with an experimental process window for selective electron beam-melted Ti-6Al-4V. Furthermore, the influence of the powder bulk density is investigated numerically. The simulations predict an increase in porosity and surface roughness for samples produced with lower powder bulk densities. Due to its higher probability for unfavorable powder arrangements, the process stability is also decreased. This shrinks the actual parameter range in a process window for producing dense parts.