Introduction
Laser materials processing takes advantage of the high power and good focusability of
laser beams to deposit a great amount of heat into a selected region of a target. The
irradiated material heats due to optical absorption and the heated material may then cool
mostly by conduction into the bulk, and in small part, by radiation and convection into
the surrounding atmosphere. When the material is heated past the point of making a phase
transition, one obtains a laser induced materials process. This may be hardening or
annealing of metals, vaporization to remove material (i.e., to cut, drill, or shape),
or melting and rapid solidification to form new phases of alloys. The absorptivity and
thermal properties of materials are strongly dependent upon temperature and so the
thermodynamic problem of laser heating is nonlinear. In addition the problem, in its
most general form, is three dimensional and therefore extremely difficult to solve in closed
form. Analysis of laser heating and subsequent effects including melting and vaporization
has been an area of interest in this community. In the last thirty years lasers have become
bigger, faster, and more controllable, while material interaction phenomena have become
more understandable. Laser processing has evolved from the challenging one-of-a-kind
difficult to process applications to products designed to take advantage of the laser's
unique ability. New areas for laser applications have developed. It has become obvious
that the laser could and should be considered as another machine tool. Today's laser
processing not only provides a competitive technology with appreciable economic benefits,
even for older products, but offers capabilities undreamed of 30 years ago. The laser
aided intelligent manufacturing group at UMR has been formed since 1999 to provide
model-based solutions to the laser materials processing community. This web page is a brief
summary of what the group has done.
Please contact to laimp@umr.edu if you have any
questions regarding laser materials processing.
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