Radiation transfer in metallic-powder beds during laser forming

This paper presents numerical simulations of two-dimensional radiation transfer in a powder layer that resides on a substrate of the same material and is exposed to a normally incident laser beam with an axisymmetric bell-shaped or top-hat intensity profile. The powder layer is treated as an equivalent homogeneous absorbing/scattering medium with radiative properties defined by the reflectance of the solid phase, the porosity of the powder and its surface area. The model used is applicable when the laser beam diameter far exceeds the particle size of the powder. It is shown that the absorptance of an optically thick layer of opaque powder particles is a universal function of the absorptance of the solid phase and is independent of surface area and porosity, in agreement with experimental data in the literature. The fraction of laser energy absorbed in the powder-substrate system and that absorbed in the substrate decrease with an increase in the reflectance of the material, but the powder bed is then more uniformly heated.