Supporting the Additive Manufacturing Simulation Community through Benchmark Measurements

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a transformative technology that provides game-changing new capabilities across a wide range of material systems and applications. Polymer AM enables “mass-customization” by producing components or parts directly from 3D files. Metal AM enables production of three-dimensional parts with geometries that can be too costly, difficult, or in some cases, impossible to produce using traditional manufacturing processes. In many cases, however, difficulties persist regarding throughput, reliability, and the properties of the printed parts. Quantitative modeling is critical for predicting and understanding these issues, but model validation and verification requires community access to extensive benchmark test data. I will describe our establishment of the Additive Manufacturing Benchmark Test Series (AM-Bench) which provides rigorous measurement test data for validating AM simulations for a broad range of AM technologies and material systems. AM-Bench includes extensive in situ and ex situ measurements, simulation challenges for the AM modeling community, and a corresponding conference series. In 2018, the first round of AM-Bench measurements and the first AM-Bench conference were completed, focusing primarily upon laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) processing of metals, and both LPBF and material extrusion processing of polymers. In all, 46 blind modeling simulations were submitted by the international AM community for comparison with the in situ and ex situ measurements. Analysis of these submissions provides valuable insight into existing AM modeling capabilities. AM-Bench operates on a three-year cycle and all benchmark data are permanently archived and freely accessible online.