Andrey V. Gusarov

Mechanisms of selective laser sintering and heat transfer in Ti powder

Coupled metallographic examination and heat transfer numerical simulation are applied to reveal the laser sintering mechanisms of Ti powder of 63‐315 μm particle diameter. A Nd:YAG laser beam with a diameter of 2.7‐5.3 mm and a power of 10‐100 W is focused on a bed of loose Ti powder for 10 s in vacuum. The numerical simulation indicates that a nearly hemispherical temperature front propagates from the laser spot. In the region of α‐Ti just behind the front, heat transfer is governed by thermal radiation. The balling effect, formation of melt droplets, is not observed because the temperature increases gradually and the melt appears inside initially sintered powder which resists the surface tension of the melt.

Contact thermal conductivity of a powder bed in selective laser sintering

Estimation of the temperature field in the powder bed in selective laser sintering process is a key issue for understanding the sintering/binding mechanisms and for optimising the technique. Heat transfer may be strongly affected by formation and growth of necks between particles due to sintering when the contact conductivity becomes predominant in the powder bed effective thermal conductivity. The necks often remain small as compared to the particle size. To calculate the effective contact conductivity of such structures a model of independent small thermal contacts is proposed. The conductivity of the considered cubic-symmetry lattices and the random packing of equal spheres depends on the three structural parameters: the relative density, the coordination number, and the contact size. The present model agrees with the known numerical calculations in the range of contact radius to particle radius ratio below 0.3. The strong dependence on the contact size is qualitatively confirmed by experimental data.

Thermal model of nanosecond pulsed laser ablation: Analysis of energy and mass transfer

A thermal model of nanosecond laser ablation considering kinetics of surface evaporation is proposed. Equations concerning heat transfer in the target and associated gas dynamics are coupled by mass and energy balances at the surface and Knudsen layer conditions. Rigorous analysis of gas-dynamics related to condensation at the target surface is introduced in this model. Laser energy absorbed by the target is partly spent for evaporation and partly dissipated in the target by thermal conduction. The sum of thermal and kinetic energies of the gas phase is, usually, less than the energy of evaporation. The fraction of energy lost for target heating increases with decrease in laser fluence and attains 100% at the ablation threshold. The dependence of ablated depth on fluence is, thus, determined by energy partition between the solid and gas phases. The gas-dynamic flow accompanying ablation consists of a layer of compressed high-temperature vapor adjacent to the target that expands and pushes the ambient gas ...

Gas dynamics of laser ablation: Influence of ambient atmosphere

A two-stage two-dimensional (2D) gas-dynamic model of laser ablation in an ambient gas atmosphere is proposed. The initial one-dimensional stage of the process is related to the ablation plume formation under the action of a laser pulse (duration of the order of 10 ns; fluence about several J/cm2; laser spot diameter about 1 mm) and describes heating, melting, and evaporation of the target, the target–vapor interaction in the Knudsen layer, and the vapor dynamics. The final 2D stage is responsible for the formation of the energy and angular distributions of the ablated material. Considerable compression of the ambient gas around the expanding plume of the laser-evaporated material and a shock front propagating through the undisturbed ambient gas are found. The pressure of the compressed ambient gas behind the shock may be much higher than the ambient one. However, at the investigated ambient pressures below 100 Pa, it remains still much lower than the vapor pressure during laser evaporation. Therefore, th...

Gas-dynamic boundary conditions of evaporation and condensation: Numerical analysis of the Knudsen layer

The gas-dynamic Euler equations require two boundary conditions to be specified at the surface of evaporated condensed phase and one condition at the surface of condensation. In the commonly considered three-parameter space of the temperature and pressure ratios and the Mach number this corresponds to a three-dimensional curve in the case of evaporation and to a surface in the case of condensation. To obtain the conditions of evaporation and condensation the steady-state Knudsen layer is numerically studied by the discrete velocity method applied to a Boltzmann equation with a relaxation collision term. Simple models of Mott-Smith type based on the conservation laws and analytical approximations of the velocity distribution function in the Knudsen layer may give satisfactory description of the gas-dynamic evaporation and condensation conditions while in general they inadequately represent the detailed structure of the distribution function. One of the reasons why the models deviate from the calculations is that they do not allow different parallel and perpendicular temperatures of the velocity distribution. Under evaporation, the Knudsen layer thickness increases with the Mach number M. Under condensation, it is inversely proportional to M when M is low. Numerical results are obtained and an analytical model is proposed for the vapor temperature considerably less than the condensed phase one (up to 10 times) what is typical for back condensation under pulsed laser ablation.

Photopyroelectric measurement of thermal conductivity of metallic powders

The effective thermal diffusivity of metal powders in air at room temperature is measured by the photopyroelectric technique. The thermal conductivity is calculated from the diffusivity, the relative density, and the specific heat obtained from literature. Maxwell’s model is a good prediction but underestimates the measured effective thermal conductivity, especially for irregular particles. Due to the large difference between the thermal conductivity of metals and air, the effective conductivity is mainly determined by the relative density of the powder bed but not by the properties of the powder material. A theoretical model showing the influence of grain size and gas pressure is presented. The dependence on the particles’ size and pressure is explained by the gradual transition from the free molecular to conductive mechanism of heat transfer in gaps between particles. The theory gives a precise estimation of effective thermal conductivity for metallic powders with a narrow size distribution of spherical...

Light extinction in metallic powder beds: Correlation with powder structure

A theoretical correlation between the effective extinction coefficient, the specific surface area, and the chord length distribution of powder beds is verified experimentally. The investigated powder beds consist of metallic particles of several tens of microns. The effective extinction coefficients are measured by a light-transmission technique at a wavelength of 540nm. The powder structure is characterized by a quantitative image analysis of powder bed cross sections resulting in two-point correlation functions and chord length distributions. The specific surface area of the powders is estimated by laser-diffraction particle-size analysis and by the two-point correlation function. The theoretically predicted tendency of increasing extinction coefficient with specific surface area per unit void volume is confirmed by the experiments. However, a significant quantitative discrepancy is found for several powders. No clear correlation of the extinction coefficient with the powder material and particle size, ...

Near-surface laser–vapour coupling in nanosecond pulsed laser ablation

The evaporation mechanism at high temperatures is one of the disputable points of the conventional thermal model of laser ablation connecting heat transfer in the target with gas-phase dynamics. A model of supercritical ablation is proposed where the vapour density is limited by a transparency condition. The model is basically laser–vapour coupling in a thin near-surface layer. The experiments on ablation of Au at 193 and 266 nm, Al at 266 nm, and graphite at 1.06 µm can be described by the proposed model. However, optical breakdown is important in graphite ablation at 193 and 248 nm. When the target surface temperature is less than the critical one (typically at fluences less than or about several J cm−2) the thermal evaporation mechanism works. At higher laser fluences it has been found that a combination of the proposed supercritical ablation mechanism with optical breakdown in the volume of the gas phase is more realistic.

Two-dimensional gas-dynamic model of laser ablation in an ambient gas

Abstract A two-step gas-dynamic model of laser ablation in an ambient gas atmosphere is proposed. The initial 1D stage is related to ablation plume formation and describes heating, melting and evaporation of the target, the target-vapour interaction in the boundary layer, and vapour dynamics. The final 2D stage is responsible for the formation of energy and angular distributions of the ablated material. These distributions are calculated assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium. Interaction between the vapour and ambient gas is taken into account by two-component gas-dynamic equations. Numerical analysis of laser ablation in ambient gas atmosphere revealed that both kinetic energy of ablated atoms and width of their angular distribution decrease with ambient pressure. Dynamics of ablated material expansion and its energy distribution are compared with the experiment.

Target-vapour interaction and atomic collisions in pulsed laser ablation

Numerical solution of the Boltzmann equation with a relaxation collision term is used to study gas-dynamic flows formed under nanosecond pulsed laser ablation. Atoms ejected from the surface of a target are assumed to have a Maxwell velocity distribution corresponding to the surface temperature and the saturated vapour pressure. The surface temperature is obtained from a transient heat transfer equation in the condensed phase. Atomic collisions in the ablation plume orient atoms towards the surface normal and speed up the plume expansion from the target. Atoms backscattered in the gas phase, stick to the target surface and cause back condensation of the vapour at later stages. When the mean free path is much less than the plume dimension, a Knudsen layer, a hydrodynamic flow region, and a low-density tail may be distinguished in the gas phase. The present numerical simulation is in good agreement with the analytical quasi-steady Mott-Smith approach to the Knudsen layer in the case of evaporation and at the early stages of condensation. Comparison with experiment reveals that the model underestimates both the width of the ablated material angular distribution and the amount of high-energy atoms. The difference increases with the laser fluence and may be caused by lateral expansion of the plume, by vapour acceleration due to laser radiation absorption or probably by non-thermal evaporation effects.