Jo Aug 20, 2024

The main purpose of laser surface melting is to obtain great strength of alloy surface and to ensure high productivity. The laser surface melting of AZ31B Mg alloy is very important in determining the microstructures and strength of alloy surface. The laser power and laser scanning speed in the laser surface melting play important roles in the temperature change and the morphology of the melting region. However, massive amounts of data on laser surface melting process take a lot of time and cost for detailed experiments of investigation.

To date, there has been an impressive amount of research on this topic, especially to investigate the melting flow and its thermal transfer by laser.

Kim Yong Il, a researcher at the Nano Physics Engineering Institute, has estimated the effects of laser power and laser scanning speed on the temperature distribution of AZ31B Mg alloy using COMSOL Multiphysics 5.3.

Firstly, based on finite element analysis software, he built a finite element model of laser surface melting Mg alloy. Then, he conducted a numerical computation with the variables used in the experiments of previous works. The numerical computation by simulation was done with different laser powers at the laser scanning speed of 360mm/min, and with different laser scanning speeds at the laser power of 2 000W.

The simulation results seem to be in good agreement with the experimental results based on infrared temperature measurement.