Product Code: ICA13_M808

Temperature Profile in Thin Wires during Laser Heating.
Authors:
Thiwanka Wickramasooriya, Laser-Advanced Manufacturing, Materials and Micro-Processing Laboratory; Orlando FL USA
Aravinda Kar, Laser-Advanced Manufacturing, Materials and Micro-Processing Laboratory; Orlando FL USA
Raj Vaidyanathan, Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center; Orlando FL USA
Presented at ICALEO 2013

The temperature distribution in a moving thin wire heated by a rectangular profile laser beam is studied. The output Gaussian profile beam of a laser system is transformed to a rectangular profile beam and the corresponding laser irradiance is integrated in the transverse direction to obtain the one-dimensional heat flux in the wire. The typical radius of the wire is in the range of hundreds of micrometers and the length of the wire can be infinitely long. The local temperature can vary from a few hundred to several thousand Kelvin depending on the laser intensity and, therefore, temperature-dependent thermophysical properties need to be considered. The resulting non-linear heat conduction equation is solved analytically to express the temperature distribution as an integral equation. The integral was determined numerically and the solution adopted is computationally robust. The results are presented in terms of two dimensionless numbers Bi and Pe so that a graphical representation of the solution can be easily applied to determine the laser processing parameters for other wires.