DoE Applied to Thermal Analysis and Simulation of Geometrical Stability of a Wind Turbine Blade Made by Selective Laser Melting

The Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is one of the most demanding additive manufacturing(AM) processes, although it assures some superior advantages in producing complex structural componentsand applies to a wide range of materials. The control of SLM parameters is crucial to guaranteethe quality of manufactured component. The steep thermal variation in part during the SLM processinduces some undesired effects, such as warping, residual thermal stresses and microcracks,as wellas geometrical instability. Effectively predicting the influence of process parameters upon the productquality of part made by SLM is extremely useful in the earliest steps of design, especially whena higher productivity is required. Particularly, thermal simulation is used to suitably calibrate someprocess parameters, to improve efficiency and reduce defects. Besides, such simulation is exploited toimprove the heat transfer between the bed and the first product layer, to reduce thermal stress and theoverall product deformation. This study exemplifies how numerical modeling of temperature distributionin a wind turbine blade made by SLM allows predicting the dimensional stability. The Design ofExperiments (DoE) and ANOVA analysis helped in studying effects on the product geometric stabilityand deformation, of some process parameters, as powder layer thickness, hatch space and laser scanspeed.