https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-026-02208-y
Regular Article
Simulation of selective laser melting of thin-walled and lattice structures
1
Udmurt State University, Izhevsk, Russia
2
Perm National Research Polytechnic University, Perm, Russia
3
Vereshchagin Institute of High Pressure Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow (Troitsk), Russia
4
Udmurt Federal Research Center of the Ural Branch of RAS, Izhevsk, Russia
a
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Received:
5
December
2025
Accepted:
16
February
2026
Published online:
27
February
2026
Abstract
In the present work, we develop an extended thermal conductivity model to describe the sintering of single track during selective laser melting processing with a pulsed laser beam for the manufacturing of lattice and thin-walled structures. The model provides an approach for the accurate quantitative prediction of melt pool geometry for both keyhole and keyhole-free regimes, without the direct calculation of hydrodynamics or the compaction of individual powder particles. The numerical model, implemented using the finite element method, was validated for both continuous and pulsed laser processing. For pulsed laser treatment, the dynamics of melt pool evolution, temperature gradients, and crystallization rates were estimated as functions of track size. The thermal history analysis algorithms are proposed to obtain characteristic values of the temperature gradients and front crystallization speeds for each processing mode. The track length, depending on the printing strategy and the cross-sectional size of the lattice structures, can influence the melt zone geometry and potentially the microstructure of the manufactured sample.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2026
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
