Time-Resolved Absorptance and Melt Pool Dynamics during Intense Laser Irradiation of a Metal

Published

October 25, 2018

Author(s)

Brian J. Simonds, Jeffrey W. Sowards, Joshua A. Hadler, Erik A. Pfeif, Boris Wilthan, Jack R. Tanner, Paul A. Williams, John H. Lehman

Abstract

Laser welding is a complex, dynamic process by which focused, high-intensity laser light is used to join two metallic surfaces and is being increasing deployed in a variety of industrial applications. Determining the time-dependent absorptance of the laser light by the material is important, not only for gaining a fundamental understanding of the light-matter interaction, but also for improving process design in manufacturing. Measurements of optical absorptance during this process are notoriously difficult due to the rapidly changing nature of the absorbing medium. Dynamic absorptance data is also of vital importance to weld modelers whose complex simulations rely on accurate input data, yet there is very little reliable data available. In this work, we optically measure the time-dependent scattered light during a 10 ms laser spot weld using an integrating sphere. From this, we calculate the dynamic absorptance for 1070 nm wavelength light incident to a 316L stainless steel sample. In addition, the time resolution of our experiment (

Citation

Physical Review Applied

Volume

10

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

DOI Link

Keywords

Laser Welding, Absorption

Citation

Simonds, B. , Sowards, J. , Hadler, J. , Pfeif, E. , Wilthan, B. , Tanner, J. , Williams, P. and Lehman, J. (2018), Time-Resolved Absorptance and Melt Pool Dynamics during Intense Laser Irradiation of a Metal, Physical Review Applied, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.10.044061 (Accessed October 7, 2025)