Numerical Modeling of Thermo-Mechanically Induced Stress in Substrates for Droplet-Based Additive Manufacturing Processes

Within the scope of additive manufacturing (AM) methods, a large number of popular fabrication techniques involve high-temperature droplets being targeted to a substrate for deposition. In such methods, an "ink" to be deposited is tailor-made to fit the desired application. Concentrated stresses are induced on the substrate in such procedures. A numerical simulation framework that can return quantitative and qualitative insights regarding the mechanical response of the substrate is proposed in this paper. A combined smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH)-finite element (FE) model is developed to solve the governing coupled thermo-mechanical equations, for the case of Newtonian inks. We also highlight the usage of consistent SPH formulations in order to recover first-order accuracy for the gradient and Laplacian operators. This allows one to solve the heat-equation more accurately in the presence of free-surfaces. The proposed framework is then utilized to simulate a hot droplet impacting a flat substrate.