How to use Element Birth and Death technique in ANSYS APDL

[barsha.hazarika]

My model is a 3-D plate of Titanium alloy which is to be deposited layer-wise by a LASER heat source. I have used the element birth technique to signify the addition of material. The procedure I have followed is-

1: Build the model and apply boundary conditions.

2: Kill all the elements using EKILL, ALL Command.

3: Apply Heat Flux on the top face of the first element in the form of a 2-D Gaussian model.

4: Activate the first element.

5: Solve the first load step.

6: Restart the analysis and repeat step 3,4,5 for the second element and solve the second load step, and so on.

I have not been able to obtain a proper melt pool and the temperature of the model keeps on increasing greatly with each load step. Is the approach correct? If not, what is the correct procedure to do so? Any help will be greatly appreciated.