Phase-Field Simulation of Microstructure Evolution in Direct Metal Laser Sintered AlSi10Mg

We employed phase-filed models to simulate microstructure evolution and solidification behaviour of AlSi10Mg alloy produced using direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) technique. We explored numerically, the dendritic morphology and orientations for a range of cooling rates and thermal gradients, focusing on the columnar-to-equiaxed transition (CET) of DMLS-AlSi10Mg. A new efficient numerical approach was also introduced to model the heterogenous nucleation of inoculant particles that triggers CET. The results of this work are expected to provide a reference for a future study on the effect of the building direction and scanning strategy on the microstructure and texture of DMLS-AlSi10Mg.