Wire-Arc-Additive-Manufacturing (WAAM) is an Additive-Manufacturing (AM) process, allowing to produce metal components layer by layer by means of Gas-Metal-Arc-Welding (GMAW) technology. The advantages of this technology are the capability to create large parts with a higher deposition rate with respect to other AM technologies. Despite these great benefits, WAAM components are affected by severe distortions and residual stresses issues. Finite element process simulation provides an efficient way to study mitigation strategies for such issues. In this paper, a WAAM modelling strategy is proposed based on a novel heat source model that takes into account the actual power distribution between filler and base materials. In order to prove the effectiveness of proposed modelling, an experimental validation is provided by comparing the measured distortions of a WAAM tests-case with the simulated ones, highlighting the accuracy of proposed model

Among emerging additive manufacturing technologies for metallic components, WAAM (Wire and Arc Additive Manufacturing) is one of the most promising. It is an arc based technology characterized by high productivity, high energy efficiency and low raw material cost. Anyway, it has some drawbacks limiting its diffusion in the industry. One is the open issue about the layer deposition strategy that must be manually optimized in order to reduce as possible the residual stress and strains, efficiently matching the geometrical characteristics of the component to build and assure a constant height for each layer. This work deals with the definition of deposition paths for WAAM. The choice of a path must be carried out as a compromise between productivity and material usage efficiency. In the present paper, the process to select an optimized strategy for the manufacturing of T-crossing features will be shown