3-D analysis of temperature distribution in the material during pulsed laser and material interaction

Abstract

Recently, lasers are being increasingly used in the industry owing to their precision and low cost. Material is heated and evaporated during laser and material interaction due to the absorption of laser beams by the material. In this study, a 3-D Laser heating model including evaporation has been solved using the electron- kinetic theory approach. The basis in examining the problem using the kinetic theory approach is to describe the heat conduction through electron-phonon and molecule-phonon collisions. The problem is solved by using the electron-kinetic theory approach in such a way that heat conduction is taken into account until the material is heated to its melting temperature and non-conduction limited heat transfer is considered after the melting temperature is reached. Non-conduction limited heat transfer through the phase change process is resulted from vacancy-molecule collisions. A numerical scheme is introduced to solve the governing equation, owing to the fact that the energy equation resulted is in the form of integro-differential equation. Four different materials, namely iron, nickel, tantalum and titanium are chosen in this study determine the material response to laser pulse heating. For each material, time dependent temperature distribution through the depth of the material and on the surface of the material is computed and analyzed for four different materials.