GO-MELT: GPU-optimized multilevel execution of LPBF thermal simulations

Computationally modeling the laser powder bed fusion process can be expensive despite the fact that the laser covers a small fraction of the entire domain. Hence, we developed GO-MELT, a multilevel approach inspired by the variational multiscale method. GO-MELT calculates the full temperature solution using three coupled thermal solvers, each solving one of three overlapping domains, subsequently referred to as levels. Level 1’s solver obtains a global, coarse-scale solution. Level 2’s solver computes a meso-scale thermal field spanning the melt pool region. Level 3’s solver obtains a fine-scale temperature field spanning the laser's immediate region. Coarser solutions provide boundary conditions for finer solvers. Finer solutions compute subgrid scales that influence coarser solvers through additional source terms. Being independently meshed, Levels 2 and 3 can track a laser along its tool path without remeshing. Moreover, fixed-sized, structured meshes allow for GPU acceleration using Google's JAX library with just-in-time compilation. Five case studies were conducted to demonstrate proper convergence of GO-MELT, to show that GO-MELT can reach the same accuracy as a uniform mesh with fewer degrees of freedom, and to quantify the computational load from each level's solver. A simulated production run averaged 1.64 ms per time step after taking 9.36 h to complete 20.5 million time steps, which is approximately 678× faster than a uniform mesh solver with identical resolution and GPU acceleration. Future work will implement different solvers into GO-MELT to improve fidelity and speed.