Thermal fields induced by oscillating laser beams versus non-oscillating equivalent laser beams — A numerical study

In high power laser material processing, like laser transformation hardening, laser welding or laser cladding, tailoring the laser intensity profile is a method to improve stability of the laser material process and/or improve the processing results. A method to tailor the laser intensity profile in real-time is using a Galvanometer Scanner to quickly and iteratively oscillate the focal spot of the laser beam over a predefined path. Due to the oscillating nature of this beam shaping method, the temporal heat input will differ from the temporal heat input by an equivalent non-oscillated laser intensity distribution. Mathematically this equivalent non-oscillated beam profile is the convolution of the laser intensity distribution of the oscillated focal spot and the predefined oscillation path. This work presents simulation results of laser induced thermal fields. The thermal fields induced by oscillated laser beams at different frequencies are compared with the thermal field induced by the equivalent non-oscillated beam. These comparisons show that even at the highest oscillation frequencies the oscillated and equivalent non-oscillated laser beams induce significantly different in temperature fields (e.g. up to 325 K peak temperature difference) and different cooling rates (10⁵ K/s and 5500 K/s respectively).