The Finite Cell Method for the Simulation of Ad- ditive Manufacturing 1 Overview

Additive manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a very promising technique for creating highly complex and customized solid structures on the basis of digital models. AM successively joins layers of material of different shapes to form a finished part Numerous variants of this technique have been proposed over the past years. One special additive manufacturing process able to produce load bearing parts is selective laser melting (SLM). SLM fuses metal powder with a laser as illustrated in figure 1. In order to use parts produced by SLM e.g. in aerospace or orthopedics, the mechanical performance of the end product must be understood. To this end it is advantageous to simulate the SLM process in order to predict the dimensional accuracy and the residual thermal stresses within the part.