Step-by-step generation of aluminum grain structure produced by selective laser melting

In this paper, a method of step-by-step packing (SSP) is used for constructing a 3D grain model of an additive aluminum alloy. The main idea of the SSP is to pack a pre-meshed volume with 3D microstructure elements in a stepwise manner in accordance with a set of geometrically-based algorithms. The basic SSP algorithm is adapted to reproduce specific grain structure formed in additive aluminum alloys under high thermal gradients during selective laser melting. Particularly, the regions of fine equiaxed and columnar grains formed along the boundary and in a central part of the melt pool are well reproduced in the simulations. The grain orientations are assigned through the Euler angles to fit the experimental texture.