Some aspects of laser heating of engineering materials

Laser induced heating processes are important when a laser is used as a machine tool in industry, since the quality of the machining process strongly depends on the heating mechanism. The present study examines a heat transfer model that provides useful information on the laser induced interaction mechanism. Steady state and time dependent heating models are introduced and temperature profiles inside the materials are predicted. Using appropriate assumptions, the time for the surface temperature to reach 90% of its steady state value is estimated. To validate the theoretical predictions, experiments are performed to measure the surface temperature of the irradiated spot during the laser heating pulse. It is found that, during the use of a pulsed laser in the drilling process, as the heating progresses the drilling velocities rise while the liquid depth and time to reach steady state fall, in this case, the energy consumed for evaporation is higher than losses through conduction.