Title: Simulating Buckling Behavior During the Laser Powder Bed Fusion Process

Authors: Mina Ghabbour, Xueyong Qu, Jacob Rome

DOI:

Abstract: The aerospace industry continues to adopt increasingly complex additively manufactured (AM) parts beyond tooling and prototypes for flight hardware of increasingly complex geometries. Process simulation becomes more valuable to improve the design and manufacturing process by understanding how various process parameters, such as laser power, scanning speed, build layout and part orientation, affect part quality and performance. Process simulation can also be used to predict and prevent build failures or out-of-tolerance dimensions before the printing process to minimize the post-processing needed. Thin-walled metal structures are widely used in aerospace applications due to high stiffness and light weight. But they are prone to buckling deformation due to thermal gradient and distortion during the laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process. Thin wall buckling during printing process can result in high residual stress, distortion and even printing failure. This paper investigates thin wall structure buckling behavior during LPBF manufacturing of Ti6Al-4V parts. The LPBF process is modeled using three different commercial finite element software packages to simulate the printing process of a thin-walled tube. Both the inherent strain approach and the thermal-mechanical approach are employed to predict part distortion, in particular buckling behavior. A benchmark problem published by the International Association for the Engineering Modelling, Analysis and Simulation Community (aka NAFEMS) is employed as a numerical example.

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Conference: SAMPE 2026

Publication Date: 2026/04/27

SKU: 14

Pages: 14

Price: $28.00