Analysis of temperature and thermal stress fields of K9 glass damaged by 1064nm nanosecond pulse laser

Abstract

There are residual scratches, inclusions and other forms of defects at surfaces of optical materials after the processes of grinding and polishing, which could either enhance the local electric field or increase the absorption rate of the material. As a result, the laser-induced damage threshold at the surface of the material is reduced greatly. In order to study underlying mechanisms and process of short pulsed laser-induced damage to K9 glass, a spatial axisymmetric model where the K9 glass was irradiated by a laser whose wavelength and pulse width are respectively 1064nm and 10ns was established. Taking into account the fact that the surface of the K9 glass is more likely to be damaged, 2μm-thick layers whose absorption coefficients are larger than bulk were set at both the input and output surfaces in the model. In addition, the model assumed that once the calculated tensile/compressive stress was greater than the tensile/compressive strength of K9 glass, the local absorption coefficient increased. The finite element method(FEM) was applied to calculate the temperature and thermal stress fields in the K9 glass. Results show that only the temperature of a small part of interacted region exceeds the melting point, while most of the damage pit is generated by thermal stress. The simulated damage morphology and the size of the damage region are consistent with those reported in literatures, which indicates that the model built in our work is reasonable.