Simulation study of the lethality effect of high-power laser with supersonic air flow

Abstract

The lethality effect of high power laser on target is simulated with CFD method under different conditions of supersonic air flow on the surface of the target. Materials used in the experiments are 2cm aluminum plate. With the Mach number changing from 1 to 5, the lethality effects of the high power laser can be obtained from the simulations under these conditions of supersonic air flow. The flow-structure-laser coupling impact on the failure time of the target is discussed based on the simulation. Results show that with the increase of mach number, the effect on the aluminum plate is increase first and then decrease by the pressure. Because that it is obvious that the maximum area of pressure is away from the center of deformation region when the mach number is bigger than 5 . At the same time, when mach number is increase, the aerodynamic heating play more important role than the convective heat transfer on the temperature field of aluminum plate. there are two impacts from the supersonic flow. Firstly , the flow can produce the pressure on the surface of the aluminum plate. Secondly, the flow can produce aerodynamic heat on the aluminum plate.