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.