ABSTRACT

Heat Conduction Due to Laser

Sources

10.1 Introduction

There is an increasing interest in material processing using lasers; particularly,

laser drilling, machining, and welding have been studied analytically and ex-

perimentally. Several such applications are discussed in Rykalin et al. [251]

and Ready [242]. Dabby and Paek [85] observed several thermally induced

eects when an intense laser radiation is incident upon a heat-transfer sur-

face. One of these eects is the \explosive removal of material". A possible

explanation for this phenomenon given by Blackwell [38] is that the point of

maximum temperature (before the phase change occurs at the exposed sur-

face) lies inside the body because of the heat loss to the surroundings. We

note that for a material which expands on changing phase and the initial

phase change occurs inside the body instead of at the exposed surface, then

the explosive material removal is expected.