Metal-based addictive manufacturing: A literature review on modeling, simulation and energy consumption

Though addictive manufacturing (AM) technologies have been widely deployed in academia and industry today, the process has not been thoroughly understood. Modern computation technology enables people to simulate AM processes at high fidelity, which has proven to be an effective way to predict, analyze, and design the AM processes. General methods for AM process simulation include the Finite Element Methods (FEM), Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) and Molecular Dynamics (MD). The three methods simulate the underlying physics at different scales and have their strength and limitations. This paper mainly discusses the applications of these simulation and modeling methods to metal-based AM. A basic overview of the fundamental methods for metal-based AM simulation will be provided, followed by a comparison of the pros and cons of those methods in order to provide choice references for different application scenarios.