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

TL;DR

This study measures the rapid, time-dependent optical absorptance of a laser on stainless steel during welding, providing detailed data to improve understanding and modeling of laser-metal interactions in manufacturing.

Contribution

It introduces a high-resolution method to measure dynamic absorptance during laser welding, filling a critical data gap for process modeling and understanding melt pool dynamics.

Findings

Dynamic absorptance varies significantly during laser welding.

Calorimetric measurements underestimate absorbed energy due to material loss.

Optical measurements align with weld cross-section analysis.

Abstract

High irradiance lasers incident on metal surfaces create a complex, dynamic process through which the metal can rapidly change from highly reflective to strongly absorbing. Absolute knowledge of this process underpins important industrial laser processes like laser welding, cutting, and metal additive manufacturing. Determining the time-dependent absorptance of the laser light by a 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 the dynamic optical absorptance are notoriously difficult due to the rapidly changing nature of the absorbing medium. This data is also of vital importance to process modelers whose complex simulations need reliable, accurate input data; yet, there is very little available. In this work, we measure the time-dependent, reflected light during a 10 ms laser spot weld using an integrating sphere apparatus. From this, we calculate the dynamic absorptance for 1070 nm wavelength light incident on 316L stainless steel. The time resolution of our experiment (< 1 us) allows for the determination of the precise conditions under which several important physical phenomena occur, such as melt and keyhole formation. The average absorptances determined optically were compared to calorimetrically-determined values, and it was found that the calorimeter severely underestimated the absorbed energy due to mass lost during the spot weld. Weld nugget cross-sections are also presented in order to verify our interpretation of the optical results, as well as provide experimental data for weld model validation.