Two dimensional hydrodynamic simulation of high pressures induced by high power nanosecond laser-matter interactions under water

Abstract

In laser shock peening (LSP) under a water-confinement regime, laser-matter interaction near the coating-water interface can induce very high pressures in the order of gigapascals, which can impart compressive residual stresses into metal workpieces to improve fatigue and corrosion properties. For axisymmetric laser spots with finite size, the pressure generation near the water-coating interface is a two dimensional process in nature. This is in particular the case for microscale LSP performed with very small laser spots, which is a very promising technique to improve the reliability performance of microdevices. However, models capable of predicting two dimensional (2D) spatial distributions of the induced pressures near the coating-water interface in LSP have rarely been reported in literature. In this paper, a predictive 2D axisymmetric model is developed by numerically solving the hydrodynamic equations, supplemented with appropriate equations of state of water and the coating material. The model can produce 2D spatial distributions of material responses near the water-coating interface in LSP, and is verified through comparisons with experimental measurements. The model calculation shows that the effect of radial release wave on pressure spatial distributions becomes more significant as the laser spot size decreases, indicating the importance of a 2D model, particularly for microscale LSP.