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Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) is a metal additive manufacturing method that manufactures products with high density and quality. The LPBF process, involving multiple physical phenomena, is controlled by several parameters such as laser power, scanning speed, material properties, etc. We present a coupled grain growth and heat transfer modeling technique to understand the materials microstructure evolution during the cooling process of LPBF. In specific, the phase-field model is considered as functions of temperature combined with transient heat transfer equation to simulate the crystallization of the melt pool. In the simulation, the computational domain for phase-field calculation and the magnitude of the driving force of order parameters are defined using current temperature distribution. Additionally, the change of order parameters generates latent heat to affect the cooling process. The finite element method using a staggering strategy is employed to solve the coupled governing equations on an irregular geometry.

additive manufacturing, grain growth, phase field, heat transfer