Ability to simulate laser absorption and melt pool dynamics in solid aluminum: results and insights from the 2022 asynchronous AM-Bench challenge

Published

February 1, 2024

Author(s)

Brian Simonds, Jack Tanner, Alexandra Artusio-Glimpse, Niranjan Parab, Cang Zhao, Tao Sun, Paul A. Williams

Abstract

The 2022 Asynchronous AM-Bench challenge was designed to test the ability of simulations to accurately predict laser power absorption as well as various melt pool behaviors (width, depth, and solidification) during laser melting of solid metal during stationary and scanned laser illumination. In this challenge, participants were asked to predict a series of experimental outcomes. Experimental data was obtained from a series of experiments performed at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratories in 2019. These experiments combined integrating sphere radiometry with high-speed X-ray imaging, allowing for the simultaneous recording of absolute laser power absorption and two-dimensional, projected images of the melt-pool. All challenge problems were based on experiments using bare aluminum solid metal. Participants were provided with pertinent experimental information like laser power, scan speed, laser spot size, and material composition. Additionally, participants were given absorptance and X-ray imaging data from stationary and scanned laser experiments on solid Ti-6Al-4V that could be used for testing their models before attempting challenge problems. In total, this challenge received 56 submissions from 8 different research groups for 8 individual challenge problems. The data for this challenge, and associated information, is available for download from the NIST Public Data Repository. This paper summarizes the results from the 2022 Asynchronous AM-Bench challenge as well as discusses the lessons learned to help inform future challenges.

Citation

Integrating Materials and Manufacturing Innovation

Pub Type

Journals

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Citation

Simonds, B. , Tanner, J. , Artusio-Glimpse, A. , Parab, N. , Zhao, C. , Sun, T. and Williams, P. (2024), Ability to simulate laser absorption and melt pool dynamics in solid aluminum: results and insights from the 2022 asynchronous AM-Bench challenge, Integrating Materials and Manufacturing Innovation, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=956550 (Accessed October 7, 2025)