Modelling and simulation of an advanced scanning strategy in Directed Energy Deposition process

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has broken through to common awareness as the future of manufacturing industry. Its peculiarity and innovation is the possibility to create parts starting from a 3D CAD model only by the addition of material, stacking up layers, contrasting with the "traditional" forming process by removing material, such as machining. This leads to a new freedom in the design process, gaining access to more complex shapes and geometries than before. As this technology advanced, a wider variety of materials were available to be involved in AM processes, but the turning point which made this technology really attractive for industrial purposes has been the possibility of using metal alloys as raw material. One of the most advanced technologies in metal additive manufacturing is the Directed Energy Deposition (DED). This technique works by depositing material and melting it with a focused energy source obtaining multiple layers which will create the final part. DED technology has two key advantages for metal AM: print speed and material cost; however, the resolution still suffers from a lack of precision mainly due to its speed. To overcome this and other limits of this process, "Prima Industrie" company has patented an advanced scanning strategy termed. This particular strategy is already known in welding process but it is the first time that it is applied to an AM process. The aim of this thesis is to model and simulate this new scanning strategy on single track deposition by creating an analytical model that predicts the characteristics of the deposition track. The model is validated on experimental linear deposition tracks and finally compared with the traditional scanning strategy for what concerns the main process parameters.