Product Code: ICA13_409

Numerical Analysis of the Influence of Beam Characteristics Onto The Process Dynamics During Laser Cutting
Authors:
Stefanie Kohl, Institute of Photonic Technologies, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; Erlangen Germany
Michael Schmidt, Institute of Photonic Technologies, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; Erlangen Germany
Presented at ICALEO 2013

Laser cutting currently represents the most common laser-based process in production technology. With the ongoing development of remote laser cutting technologies, such as remote fusion cutting and remote ablation cutting, its field of application will widen even more.
Exploring these processes, simulations offer major advantages compared to experiments. Not only do they offer insight into process variables that are not or only hardly accessible experimentally, but also they allow us to investigate cutting with process parameters that are not even experimentally available yet, e.g. alternative beam sources.
Therefore, we refined our transient, numerical simulation model for laser-material processing and applied it on laser cutting. In contrast to other simulation models which focus on certain aspects, our model has a comprehensive objective, which enables us to examine various laser-material processing techniques with the same universal model.
After introducing the model, we present results on the process dynamics of remote fusion cutting and ablation cutting. For comparison, we show current results on gas-assisted fusion cutting and demonstrate that our results agree well with experiments. Conclusively, we present how laser characteristics, such as polarization and beam profile, influence the process dynamics, which will become increasingly important with the development of new beam sources.