THE CONTRIBUTION OF PROF. AKIRA MATSUNAWA TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF LASER WELDING PROCESS

摘要

Among his various contributions to the domain of laser processing of materials, the entire laser community agrees to recognize that Prof. A Matsunawa has been a leading and major contributor to the understanding of the laser welding process since more than 25 years. It is also interesting to remark that his contribution to this field occurred simultaneously with the constant development of the ICALEO Conference, where he presented his more valuable scientific results through a continuous and regular participation. Everyone will admit that nearly 25 years ago, Prof. Matsunawa had already identified and described most of the problems concerning physical processes involved in laser welding that himself, his main collaborators, and a complete generation of researchers throughout the world have analyzed and studied later on. My focus here is to emphasize this contribution by making a global review of the major papers he published in the proceedings to the ICALEO Conference. I will also try to demonstrate how accurate and precursory were his analysis and description of several key factors of laser processing such as plasma effects, hydrodynamics problems, or keyhole dynamics.