Defining Free Surface Heat Transfer

You can specify the heat transfer, including convection and radiation, at the free surface of a part during additive manufacturing.

Before you begin: To understand the entries and definitions required, review the PDF documents detailing the Abaqus user subroutines and keywords for use with additive manufacturing.
  1. From the Thermal section of the action bar, click Free Surface Heat Transfer .
  2. Select the part.

    The part indicates the predefined volume (part or mesh) that is filled with material, layer by layer, to become a real part as the additive manufacturing process is completed.

  3. Enter a Reference Temperature.

    The reference temperature is the ambient temperature around the part. The reference temperature is required to calculate heat transfer based on the difference between it and the part temperature.

  4. Optional: Enter a Scale factor that is applied to the magnitude in each step.
  5. Optional: Select an Amplitude that defines the magnitude during the step.

    Note: The only choice is a default amplitude.

  6. Select Convection, and enter a coefficient to include convective heat transfer effects in your process.
  7. Optional: Enter a Scale factor that is applied to the convection coefficient in each step.
  8. Optional: Select an Amplitude that defines the convection coefficient during the step.

    Note: The only choice is a default amplitude.

  9. Select Radiation, and enter the emissivity to include radiative heat transfer effects in your process.

    You can enter emissivity values between zero (all radiation is reflected), and one (all radiation is absorbed).

  10. Optional: Enter a Scale factor that is applied to the radiation emissivity in each step.
  11. Optional: Select an Amplitude that defines the radiation emissivity during the step.

    Note: The only choice is a default amplitude.