grain structure was not explicitly introduced in the model, allowance
was made for phase transformations developing in laser additive
manufacturing. Zhang et al. [18] constructed a predictive cellular automata
(CA) FE (CAFE) model to study the mesoscopic morphological
evolution of type SS 316 steel subjected to laser-assisted metal deposition.
The same CAFE model based on the approach developed by Rappaz
and Gandin [19] was adopted in [20] to simulate grain growth observed
during electron-beammelting. Bauereiß et al. [20] examined melting of
metal powders deposited on a metallic substrate followed by grain
growth, whereas Zhang et al. [18] simulated grain nucleation and
growth in the absence of original microstructure. Nie et al. [21] combined
the FE method and a stochastic analysis to simulate the microstructure
produced by laser additive manufacturing on the scale of
individual dendrites. Themodel developed accounts for dendrite nucleation
and growth, Nb segregation, and Laves phase particle formation
during additive layer manufacturing in an Nb-bearing nickel-based superalloy.
However, the model suffers from mesh anisotropy. In other
words, the simulated dendrites are aligned with the global axis and exhibit
the same orientation.