TWI Ltd
TWI AM Bench challenge
Madie Allen, National Structural Integrity Research Centre (NSIRC) student at Brunel University London and Tyler London, Team Manager, Numerical Modelling and Optimisation, TWI Ltd, with the team’s AM-Bench Challenge award.
A team of four from TWI Ltd and the Simulia brand of Dassault Systèmes has been named joint winners of an Additive Manufacturing Benchmark Test Series organised by the U.S. National Institute Standards and Technology (NIST).
Entering the ‘residual elastic strains’ category, the group was deemed to have produced the joint-best modelling results predicting the residual stresses within an as-built IN625 bridge structure.
The Additive Manufacturing Benchmark (AM Bench) Test Series has been backed by scientists and engineers from over 50 organisations, and received more than 40 entires from North America, Europe, and Asia. It was set up in response to the many challenges faced by those looking to harness additive manufacturing, which include distortion, residual stresses, and undesirable micro-structures. These drawbacks, in addition to a lack of sufficient material property data and the continued rapid development of AM processes, led to NIST proposing a set of traceable standards and benchmark tests for the AM community.
Tyler London, Team Manager, Numerical Modelling and Optimisation, TWI, was joined by Madie Allen, a National Structural Integrity Research Centre, Brunel University London student currently undertaking a PhD with TWI on the numerical modelling of AM; Yangzhan Yang, Americas R&D Customer Support Manager, Simulia; and Victor Oancea, R&D Technology Director, SIMULIA. The team harnessed the latest features of the Dassault Systèmes’ 3DExperience platform and finite element technology implemented in the Simulia Abaqus application in their submission, which will be the focus of a research paper detailing the group’s learnings throughout the process.
“We are delighted to have won this prestigious award with Dassault Systèmes for our joint numerical modelling work on the prediction of additive manufacturing distortions and residual stresses,” commented London on behalf of the team. “The NIST AM-Bench series is reminiscent of the old Batelle round-robin on crack opening displacement and the more recent NeT welding residual stress round-robin, both of which have resulted in significant engineering analysis advances in their respective areas. The AM-Bench also raised quite a few questions on certain aspects of AM modelling that we look forward to investigating in the future. As an industry-facing organisation, TWI hopes these validated simulation tools will improve the wider adoption and certification of AM parts.”
