Development and validation of energy simulation for additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a promising manufacturing technology towards cleaner production systems. Nevertheless, recent studies state that environmental benefits of AM are case-specific and need to be evaluated and confirmed in the design phase. To enable the energy performance evaluation in the design phase, developing convenient tools for energy prediction of AM has been an important research task. Aiming at this problem, this paper presents the research for energy modeling, simulation implementation, and experimental validation of an energy simulation tool of two AM processes: Selective laser melting (SLM) and Fused deposition modeling (FDM). The developed simulation tool can be conveniently used for energy consumption quantification and evaluation during the product and process design for AM.