Laser repetitive pulse heating and melt pool formation at the surface

Abstract

In this paper, laser repetitive pulse heating of steel surface is conducted to predict temperature and melt pool geometry in the irradiated region. The enthalpy porosity method is incorporated to account for the phase change in the irradiated surface. The flow field in the melt pool is simulated after considering the Marangoni effect. To examine the influence of the laser pulse intensity distribution on the formation and flow field in the melt pool, the laser pulse intensity parameter (β) is introduced in the analysis. An experiment is conducted to compare the melt pool geometry predicted from the simulation and that obtained from the experiment. The melt pool size is significantly affected by the intensity parameter (i.e., the melt pool is too shallow for high-intensity parameters). The predicted melt pool geometry is in agreement with the experimental results.