Publication Date

2015

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Majumdar, Pradip, 1954-

Degree Name

M.S. (Master of Science)

Legacy Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering

LCSH

Mechanical engineering; Laser beams--Research; Manufacturing processes--Research; Metals--Rapid solidification processing--Research; Rapid prototyping--Research

Abstract

The additive manufacturing process or 3D printing (3DP) uses digital data obtained from a three-dimensional CAD solid model to create a physical object by building sequential layers on top of one another. The physical object is formed by sequentially printing material particles in a layer while concurrently heating, melting, and then cooling the deposited material. The process is repeated layer-by-layer to obtain a desired 3D solid physical object. The materials could be powder particles of metals, polymer, or composite. The additive manufacturing process considered in this study involve selective laser heating and fusion of metallic particles as it has a high potential to produce complex physical object with intricate internal geometries with high tolerance and precision. The objective of the research is to evaluate and characterize selective laser heating and melting of aluminum particles for fabricating layered substance using laser beam. The process of additive fabricated metallic layer will be analyzed by conducting three-dimension thermal simulation analysis of the process for fabricating a layer using spherical metallic particles and using the Selective Laser Melting (SLM). Computational algorithm will be developed to accurately melting spherical particles and forming a layer of desired thickness. The fabrication process will be iterated to ensure quality in terms of precision and resolution with varying range of operating parameters such particle size, beam diameter and power intensity, and cooling parameters to check the sensitivity on precision and resolution.

Comments

Advisors: Pradip Majumdar.||Committee members: Sciammarella Federico; Gonser Matt.

Extent

129 pages

Language

eng

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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