Investigating laser beam shadowing and powder particle dynamics in directed energy deposition through high-fidelity modelling and high-speed imaging

Laser beam shadowing in directed energy deposition process occurs when in-flight powder particles partially block the laser beam, preventing it from fully reaching the melt pool. This blockage alters the beam's profile, introducing spatio-temporal randomness in heat transfer to the melt pool and affecting its stability. This study utilizes a novel high-fidelity multiphysics model to quantitatively analyze gas-powder stream dynamics and laser-particle interactions. It specifically focuses on dynamic variations in laser beam shadowing, attenuation, and reflection of the laser beam radiant energy, along with powder particles temperature prediction from inflight heating, accounting for multiple reflection phenomena. Gas-particle dynamics is modeled using a fully coupled CFD-DEM approach, while laser-particle in-flight interactions are predicted using a ray-tracing-based photon discretization method. Modeling predicted that interactions between the laser beam and the in-flight powder stream could result in energy losses up to approximately 70 % due to shadowing and attenuation. The study comprehensively explored the spatio-temporal variations in the attenuated laser beam profile, revealing significant deviations from its initial Gaussian profile and substantial stochasticity and randomness over time. To confirm the modeling results and correlate computational predictions with experimental data, high-speed visible imaging of the powder stream, both with and without the melt pool, along with laser beam attenuation measurements using a photodiode system, were conducted. The model's predictions of particle velocity and laser beam attenuation characteristics aligned with the results from these experiments. Modeling and high-speed imaging demonstrated that in-flight heating caused some particles to melt and few others to reach the vaporization threshold. High-speed imaging further validated these numerical findings by examining the interaction of heated particles with the melt pool across different phases (solid, liquid, and partially vaporized). A significant observation was the increased velocities of partially vaporized particles due to recoil pressure from selective vaporization, which led to the formation of deep craters in the melt pool resulting from high-speed impact.