MeltPoolDG is a high-fidelity simulation software for predicting the coupled powder–melt–gas dynamics occurring during metal additive manufacturing such as laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) or binder jetting. It is designed to resolve the complex multi-phase thermo-fluid-structure-contact-interaction phenomena in and around the melt pool, including melting, solidification, evaporation, recoil pressure, capillary forces, interface dynamics, and the interaction between liquid metal, ambient gas, metal vapor, and powder particles.
Rather than providing a general-purpose multiphysics framework, MeltPoolDG focuses on delivering state-of-the-art numerical methods tailored to the extreme physical conditions encountered in metal additive manufacturing. The software combines advanced finite element discretizations with modern immersed-interface techniques, matrix-free operator evaluation, and SIMD-vectorized algorithms to enable highly accurate, scalable, and computationally efficient simulations.
Depending on the problem under consideration, the software supports Eulerian formulations for multiphase thermo-fluid dynamics, Lagrangian formulations for particle transport, and mixed Eulerian–Lagrangian formulations for coupled thermo-fluid–structure–contact phenomena. These formulations are discretized using continuous and discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods as well as discrete element methods.
MeltPoolDG leverages the mature scientific computing ecosystem provided by the general-purpose finite element library deal.II and its third-party libraries, including p4est, Trilinos, and METIS. In addition, we build open the highly-efficient matrix-free incompressible flow solver adaflo.
Originally developed as part of an FWF Schrödinger Fellowship research project on high-fidelity melt pool simulations with resolved vapor flow, MeltPoolDG has evolved into a comprehensive software suite for simulating coupled powder–melt–gas dynamics in metal additive manufacturing.
MeltPoolDG is developed under the umbrella of the open-source multiphysics simulation framework 4C, which provides a comprehensive environment for coupled multiphysics simulations.
Key Features
- High-fidelity multiphase thermo-fluid simulations for metal additive manufacturing
- Continuous and discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods (CG/DG FEM)
- Conservative level-set methods with CutFEM immersed-interface techniques
- Discrete element methods (DEM) for powder particle dynamics
- Matrix-free operator evaluation with SIMD vectorization
- Distributed-memory parallelization using MPI
- Adaptive mesh refinement
- Designed for application-oriented research and large-scale HPC simulations
Links
- Source code on GitHub: https://github.com/MeltPoolDG/MeltPoolDG-dev
- User documentation and tutorials: https://meltpooldg.github.io/MeltPoolDG/
- Developer documentation: https://meltpooldg.github.io/MeltPoolDG/doxygen
- Example simulations: YouTube