Numerical simulation of heat transfer and fluid flow in laser drilling of metals

摘要

Laser processing as laser drilling, laser welding and laser cutting, etc. is rather important in modern manufacture, and the interaction of laser and matter is a complex phenomenon which should be detailed studied in order to increase the manufacture efficiency and quality. In this paper, a two-dimensional transient numerical model was developed to study the temperature field and molten pool size during pulsed laser keyhole drilling. The volume-of-fluid method was employed to track free surfaces, and melting and evaporation enthalpy, recoil pressure, surface tension, and energy loss due to evaporating materials were considered in this model. Besides, the enthalpy-porosity technique was also applied to account for the latent heat during melting and solidification. Temperature fields and melt pool size were numerically simulated via finite element method. Moreover, the effectiveness of the developed computational procedure had been confirmed by experiments.