Modeling of the geometry built-up by coaxial laser material deposition process

Coaxial laser material deposition (also known as laser-cladding process) is being used for selective material deposition on complex parts since the 1990s. Its main applications include coatings, rapid manufacturing, or high added value part repairing. The main advantages of the coaxial laser-cladding process are the high-quality bonding interface between added and substrate material, excellent mechanical behavior, and high precision of the resulting geometry in comparison with conventional welding processes. Moreover, the laser-cladding process involves low-heat input, which leads on minimum thermal distortions and reduced heat-affected zone. Thus, high responsibility components like aeronautic turbine parts, tooling for die and mold industry or medical implants, among others, can be processed with laser cladding. This paper presents a laser material deposition process model for the estimation of the geometric characteristics of added material layers, including the prediction of the 3D shape of single and multiple clads and considering overlapping effect, which is the common situation on industrial applications. The model only needs the typical process parameters as the laser power, substrate material, powder material and size, etc. The model has been applied to different laser material deposition strategies and validated for two different materials (AISI D2 and Inconel 718) by experimental testing, obtaining good agreement between estimated and measured values. Finally, a case study for a turbine engine fixture is presented as a possible application. Therefore, the proposed algorithm can be applied for estimating the resulting geometry of the laser-cladding process and predict the optimum laser-cladding strategy, number of layers, and distance between layers before programming the operation.