Openfoam CFD Modeling Of Laser Ablated Plasma Plumes

Abstract

The expansion of laser-ablated plasma plume into an ambient atmosphere is a very complex phenomenon. It includes different stages, each with different underlining physics such as heating and melting of the surface of material, evaporation, ionization, and expansion of the produced plasma. Various numerical models have been developed to capture the behavior of the ablated plasma on different time and space scales. Treating a plasma as a conducting fluid has the advantage of capturing its overall macroscopic dynamics on long timescales [1] . To improve our understanding of the plasma expansion, a hydrodynamic two-fluid two-temperature CFD model has been developed within the open-source OpenFOAM software toolbox utilizing multiphaseEulerFoam solver [2] . The plasma is treated as two fluids, one for ions and another for electrons [1] . The ultimate goal is to implement many relevant physical processes in the OpenFOAM CFD model in order to increase its accuracy in capturing specific effects of the laser ablation, blow-off, and expansion of a plasma plume. The CFD model has been validated against experimental and computational data. The modeling of laser ablation of pure and composite materials has been carried out. The energy transfer by electrons to ions and the time and space evolution of densities, velocities, and pressures for both electronic and ionic fluids are investigated.