Quick Start

The AMB2018-02-B tutorial is the best first case: it is a calibrated IN625 single track with a Gaussian volumetric source.

Copy the tutorial

Never run directly inside the installation tree.

mkdir -p "$FOAM_RUN/AdditiveFOAM"
cd "$FOAM_RUN/AdditiveFOAM"
cp -r "$ADDITIVEFOAM_TUTORIALS/AMB2018-02-B" first-track
cd first-track

Inspect the processor count in system/decomposeParDict and ensure the requested MPI ranks are available.

Run

./Allrun

The script runs blockMesh, decomposes the case, runs additiveFoam in parallel, reconstructs the OpenFOAM fields, and conditionally reconstructs ExaCA and solidification data.

Follow progress in another terminal:

tail -f log.additiveFoam

Useful log entries include the AdditiveFOAM build identity, time step, Courant/diffusion/thermo numbers, source depth, absorbed power, and thermodynamic iteration residual.

Visualize results

The Allrun script reconstructs the parallel solution into the case time directories. ParaView can read these OpenFOAM fields through an empty .foam marker file:

touch first-track.foam
paraview first-track.foam

In ParaView, select first-track.foam in the Pipeline Browser and click Apply in the Properties panel. Use the time controls to move to the final time, then select a field from the Coloring menu. Start with T to view the temperature field. A Slice through the scan plane shows the thermal wake, while a Contour at the material solidus or liquidus shows the corresponding melt-pool boundary.

Select alpha.solid to distinguish solid, mushy, and liquid regions; alpha.powder to identify unconsolidated material; qDot to view the instantaneous volumetric source; and U to examine melt-pool flow when fluid coupling is enabled. The primary fields are:

Field	Meaning
`T`	Temperature
`U`	Mixture velocity; initialized to zero if absent
`p_rgh`	Reduced pressure; initialized to zero if absent
`alpha.powder`	Powder volume fraction; initialized to zero if absent
`alpha.solid`	Solid fraction calculated from `T` and `thermoPath`
`qDot`	Total volumetric heat input from all beams

Plan-view temperature map on the top surface of the AMB2018-02-B case at 2 milliseconds, with the 1410 kelvin solidus contour in black and 1620 kelvin liquidus contour in white. — IN625 top-surface temperature at 2 ms. The black and white contours denote the 1410 K solidus and 1620 K liquidus, respectively.

Use plotPower separately from ParaView to plot the volume-integrated heat-source power recorded in log.additiveFoam:

plotPower

This creates power.png in the case directory. Use it to verify that the spatially integrated source converges to the expected absorbed power: absorptivity multiplied by the prescribed source power.