Comparison study of numerical analysis for heat transfer and fluid flow under two different laser scan pattern during selective laser melting

In selective laser melting, there are two different laser scan pattern including point exposure scan and continuous exposure scan. Different laser scan pattern has a significant effect on the thermal behavior and fluid flow of molten pool. In this paper, under the same energy input, the effects of laser scan pattern on the temperature evolution behavior, molten pool dimensions, fluid flow and cooling rate are thorough studied by method of numerical simulation. Experiments for point exposure are carried out which are in a good agreement with the numerical results.