Modeling of damage to metal materials due to laser irradiation through numerical simulations

Recently, laser energy has been widely utilized from applications ranging from machining to weapon systems. In this study, the objective is to derive a damage modeling that can rapidly predict the damage to metallic materials resulting from continuous-wave laser irradiation. To this end, two materials, steel and aluminum, were subjected to computational analysis, and the analysis techniques were validated by comparing their results to previously published experimental results. Based on the keyhole depths of the specimens, the computational analysis results deviated by 3 %–10 % from the experimental results. The damage to each material was predicted over time by applying laser energies of 15 kW to 80 kW to disk-shaped specimens. Based on the results, a damage modeling was proposed. The proposed damage modeling yielded accuracies of within 4 % for DP600 steel, 7 % for 304 stainless steel, and 9 % for aluminum over a range of laser powers.