This guest contribution on the Altair Blog is written by the Additive Works Team. Additive Works is a member of the Altair Partner Alliance.

More lasers. More power. Higher build rates and lower costs per part. This is the main expectation for the new generation of laser beam melting machines with more than two lasers or even kilowatt lasers. But what’s happening if you increase the energy per time transferred to the process by magnitudes? Basically, you can expect macroscopic overheating of parts during the process, leading to unwanted additional shrinkage, graded microstructure or phases and varying mechanical material properties. Although the part seems to be okay after the process, this can still lead to further issues in post-processing like cracking during heat-treatment or application. Depending on the material and the maximum temperature reached, you may see that overheating has taken place. But is this sufficient for industrial production?

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Motor designers have to consider increasing conflicting constraints during the different design phases, like efficiency, temperature, weight, compactness or cost. Moreover, under strong environmental and governmental pressure during the past years, the automotive industry is continuously evolving to integrate new technology for their next generation vehicle powertrains.

Powertrain electrification and hybridization are the most common technologies considered to tackle undesirable fuel emissions linked to internal combustion engines (ICE). According to a recent J.P. Morgan research, old pure-ICE propulsion technology should decline to 70% of the worldwide market share in 2025, falling to around 40% by 2030. This represents a market of about 8.5 million electric vehicles (EV) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) in 2025; whereas in 2016 just under 1 million vehicles or 1% of global auto sales came from plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). In the meantime, many capital cities declared they will ban polluting technologies, and most automakers announced a turn to electric propulsion with high conversion rates. A radical change is that this transformation will not only be led by premium manufacturers, but this decision concerns all the car manufacturers reorganizing their product range short term. With a few vehicle manufacturers having a head start of around 15 years, every new player needs to move quickly to produce their electric and hybrid vehicles. That means modern, efficient simulation solutions are needed to fill technological gaps.

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