Numerical modeling of laser ablation of materials

Abstract

In this paper, we report a numerical simulation of laser ablation of a material by ultrashort laser pulses. The thermal mechanism of laser ablation is described in terms of a one-dimensional nonstationary heat conduction equation in a coordinate system associated with a moving evaporation front. The laser action is taken into account through the functions of the source in the thermal conductivity equation that determine the coordinate and time dependence of the laser source. For a given dose of irradiation of the sample, the profiles of the sample temperature at different times, the dynamics of the displacement of the sample boundary due to evaporation, the velocity of this boundary, and the temperature of the sample at the moving boundary are obtained. The dependence of the maximum temperature on the sample surface and the thickness of the ablation layer on the radiation dose of the incident laser pulse is obtained. Numerical calculations were performed using the finite difference method. The obtained results agree with the results of other works obtained by their authors.

Keywords

• numerical simulation
• ablation
• pulsed lasers
• heat conduction equation