Front-loading for metal powder additive manufacturing processes with a computational science simulation code SPLICE

A general-purpose three-dimensional thermohydraulics numerical simulation code SPLICE was developed at Japan Atomic Energy Agency and designed to deal with gas-liquid-solid consolidated incompressible viscous flows with a phase change process in various laser applications, such as welding, coating, cutting, etc. The result obtained from metal powder laser additive manufacturing simulations is very encouraging in the sense that the SPLICE code would be used as one of efficient tools to provide the laser irradiation conditions. (author)