Fabrication assistée par ordinateur pour le procédé EBM (2016)

The Electron Beam Melting (EBM) process allows to build metallic parts from powder. Thanks to the geometric and mechanical quality of the parts produced, the EBM process can be used to manufacture functional parts and not only prototypes. This process, with other additive metallic processes, make it possible to consider a transition from 3D printing to metallic additive manufacturing.The use of additive manufacturing in an industrial environment requires compliance with quality, cost and time criteria for the parts produced. The production of manufactured parts involves a series of numerical stages which is called the numerical chain. The numerical chain has a significant impact on the three criteria mentioned above. Thus, this thesis provides an answer to the following question:How Computer Aided Manufacturing can improve the quality, cost and time of the EBM manufacturing process?This problem is addressed through the following underlying question:What are the required characteristics for a Computer Aided Manufacturing system adapted to the EBM process?In order to answer this question, the current numerical chain is analyzed. Three main limitations are found:- the use of STL files format- the process cannot be optimized at different scales- the process cannot be simulatedTo solve these issues, a CAM environment is proposed. It allows the centralization of all numerical operations in a single environment. All supported formats can be used within this environment, such as native CAD file formats or STEP format. Software developments are done to prove the feasibility of such an environment.The CAM environment implementation reveals the crucial role of simulation in this system. It is therefore necessary to answer this second question:How to obtain an EBM process simulation allowing the development of parameters, virtually?Although EBM simulation is a recurrent subject in scientific literature, existing studies are based on the finite elements method but the calculation time needed is too important to be used in an CAM environment. Thus, an alternative type of simulation is created in this thesis: a simulation based on abacus. It is composed of a finite elements model, that allows heat maps generation for standards cases of heating and cooling. These heat maps are then transformed in abacus. The simulation algorithm based on abacus search the nearest abacus from the simulated situation in order to estimate the temperatures at the next time step.This simulation method was used to reduce the calculation time while keeping a sufficient precision to optimize process parameters.With the simulation based on abacus, a tool for the optimization of melting strategies is developed. This tool allows quality improvement for the produced parts through the calculation of melting strategies according to thermic criteria.To summarize, the main contributions of this work are:- the definition of requirements specifications of a powerful numerical chain for the EBM process- the development of a CAM environment adapted to the EBM process- the proposal of a fast simulation for the EBM process, based on abacus- the development of a tool for the optimization of melting strategies