Fig. 16

Simulated microstructure distributions for a LPBF process of a one millimeter-sided cube within its vertical x-z-center plane that contains the center node P. The microstructure state is shown for a base-plate temperature of \(T_{\text {bp}}=303 \ K\) and the processing time \(t=3 \ s\). The gray area above marks the layers that are not yet processed by the laser at the time \(t=3\ s\). In the right figure, which depicts the \(\beta \)-phase fraction \(\mathrm {X}_{\beta }\), the melt-pool is indirectly visible through the decreased \(\beta \)-phase fraction in the right corner of the up-most layers due to the laser that has just previously scanned this plane in x-direction from left to right. In a similar fashion, the decreased amount \(\mathrm {X}_{\beta }\) in the upper left corner of the right figure stems from the heat of the laser that is currently melting the subsequent track with a now \(45^\circ \) rotated scanning direction (diagonal scanning), starting in a corner of the cube