A common practice when developing a WAAM process is to build small “walls” by depositing material layer by layer on a build plate and then machining mechanical and microstructural samples to quantify the properties provided by the process. For this study, a simple finite-element model was constructed in Abaqus consisting of a 50mm by 100mm by 2.5mm build plate where eight layers of deposition welds are deposited along the center. The beads are 2mm by 1.5mm by 50mm and are deposited in the same direction after a five minute delay between passes to allow the heat to distribute into the plate. Figure 2 shows the build plate with each pass color coded, signifying deposition layers. The model was meshed with 15,123 nodes and 12,000 elements