Effect of characteristic substrate parameters on the deposition geometry of CMT additive manufactured Al-6.3%Cu alloy

During the wire and arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) the temperature distribution and geometry of the deposited layers are usually evolving even with the constant deposition parameters. It is thus essential to find out when and how to adjust the processing parameters according to the characteristic parameters of the deposited part, which could be taken as a generalized “substrate”. In this paper, a modified heat source was employed to establish a tridimensional finite element transient thermal analysis model (FETTA) for the cold metal transfer (CMT) additive manufacturing of Al-6.3%Cu alloy. After validation, this FETTA model was employed to investigate the effect of characteristic substrate parameters, including the length L_x, width W_y, thickness T_z, and initial temperature T_ini, on the minimum temperature (T_min) during the first pass deposition through the Box-Behnken response surface design (BBD). The results showed that L_x had negligible influence on T_min. The T_min model was then established and helped to come up with a new deposition sequence for the deposition of ribbed slabs on a pipe without raising the heat input.