Nonlinear Heat Conduction in Isotropic and Orthotropic Materials with Laser Heat Source

Abstract

Although the convective cooling of simple materials undergoing laser irradiation has been well documented, the effects of radiative cooling for composite materials undergoing laser heating are not as well documented and are of increasing importance to the manufacturing and aerospace industries. The temperature distributions within one-dimensional homogeneous and two-dimensional orthotropic radiating plates subjected to a spatially decaying laser source are presented. The incident energy at the exposed external surface is partially absorbed and transferred through the plate by conduction. The temperature results are presented as a function of a wide variety of thermal and geometric dimensionless parameters. The effects of surface radiation and material conductivity are examined in detail. Results from this study are compared to data in the open literature to gain a better understanding of the effects that the fourth power law for radiation, local temperature gradient in conduction, and first power of the temperature difference in convection have on the resultant temperature profiles.