Product Code: ICAL08_2003

Thermal and Stress Characteristics in Diode Laser Chip-free Cutting of Glass
Authors:
Salman Nisar, The Univeristy of Manchester; Manchester Great Britain
Farhan Nazir, The Univeristy of Manchester; Manchester Great Britain
Lin Li, The Univeristy of Manchester; Manchester Great Britain
M. A Sheikh , The University of Manchester; Manchester Great Britain
Presented at ICALEO 2008

In the laser cleaving of brittle materials using controlled fracture technique, thermal stresses are used to induce the crack and the material is separated along the cutting path by extending the crack. In this study, the glass sheet is stressed thermally using a 808-940 nm diode laser radiation. One of the problems in laser cutting of glass with controlled fracture technique is the cut deviation at the leading and the trailing edges of the glass sheet. In order to avoid this damage it is necessary to understand the stress distributions which control crack propagation. An initial study is conducted here to understand and analyse the cut deviation problem of glass by examining the stress fields during laser cutting. This paper reports on these stress fields obtained from a finite element simulation of diode laser cutting of Soda-Lime glass sheets.