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Laser Hot Wire (LHW) Directed Energy Deposition (DED) Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes are capable of manufacturing parts with a high deposition rate. There is a growing research interest in replacing large cast Nickel Aluminum Bronze (NAB) components using LHW DED processes for maritime applications. Understanding thermomechanical behavior during LHW DED of NAB is a critical step towards the production of high-quality NAB parts with desired performance and properties. In this paper, finite element simulations are first used to predict the thermomechanical time histories during LHW DED of NAB test coupons with an increasing geometric complexity, including single-layer and multilayer depositions. Simulation results are experimentally validated through in situ measurements of temperatures at multiple locations in the substrate as well as displacement at the free end of the substrate during and immediately following the deposition process. The results in this paper demonstrate that the finite element predictions have good agreement with the experimental measurements of both temperature and distortion history. The maximum prediction error for temperature is 5% for single-layer samples and 6% for multilayer samples, while the distortion prediction error is about 12% for single-layer samples and less than 4% for multilayer samples. In addition, this study shows the effectiveness of including a stress relaxation temperature at 500 °C during FE modeling to allow for better prediction of the low cross-layer accumulation of distortion in multilayer deposition of NAB.

There is increased interest in using nickel aluminum bronze (NAB) alloys in large-scale directed energy deposition additive manufacturing (DEDAM) processes for maritime applications, but one challenge lies in the component distortion that results from residual stress generated during fabrication. This paper describes the development and evaluation of thermo-mechanical simulations for laser hot wire (LHW) DEDAM of NAB to predict part distortion. To account for the dearth of temperature-dependent properties for NAB C95800 in open literature and public databases, temperature-dependent material and mechanical properties for NAB C95800 were experimentally measured using test specimens fabricated with a variety of DEDAM processes. Autodesk’s Netfabb Local Simulation software, a commercial finite-element based AM solver, was employed but with its heat source model modified to accommodate LHW DEDAM’s oscillating laser path and additional energy input supplied by the preheated wire feedstock. Thermo-mechanical simulations were conducted using both the acquired temperature-dependent material and mechanical properties and the constant room-temperature properties to assess the impact on simulation accuracy. The usage of constant properties in the thermo-mechanical analysis resulted in significantly different predicted distortion compared to those using the temperature-dependent properties, at times even predicting substrate displacement in an opposite direction.