Abstract
Melting of a subcooled powder bed that contains a mixture of two powders with significantly different melting points under a moving Gaussian heat source was investigated numerically. Shrinkage induced by the density change on the melting process was taken into account in the physical model. The problem is formulated using a temperature transforming model and solved by the finite difference method. The results show that the effect of surface heat loss due to convection and radiation is not negligible regardless of whether the shrinkage phenomena is considered. The decrease of moving heat source intensity will result in decrease of the sintering depth and the volume of the liquid pool. The increase of the scanning velocity will decrease the sintering depth and the location and shape of the liquid pool is affected significantly.