Search

Laser Shock Peening (LSP) of stainless-steel 316 and 316L was studied using Ti: Sapphire laser pulses of about 2 ps duration, maximum energy of about 1mJ and pulse repetition rate of 5kHz in different liquid confinement media of Ethanol, Deionized water and separate aqueous solutions of NaCl and Glycerol. It is found that the laser fluence and/or energy attenuating mechanisms like self-focusing, filamentation, plasma breakdown in the confinement media are less significant with ps laser pulses than those with sub-ps or fs pulse durations. It is shown that the resulting surface hardness of the peened steel as a function of laser fluence depends significantly on the confinement media and the relative increase in the hardness increases monotonically with the acoustic impedance of the liquid of the confinement medium used during LSP.

In this paper we analyze femtosecond laser processing of metals in liquids searching for optimal conditions for predictable ablation. Incident laser pulses are stretched or compressed, self-focused and scattered on bubbles and on surface waves in the liquid environment. Influence of these effects on the laser intensity distribution on the target surface is discussed and optimal processing parameters are suggested.

In this paper we demonstrate experimentally that crystalline phases appear in amorphous titanium oxide upon processing with ultrafast laser pulses. Amorphous titanium thin films were produced by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and exposed to femtosecond laser pulses. Formation of rutile phase was confirmed by X-ray diffraction, Raman measurements and electron backscattering diffraction. A rang of processing parameters for the crystallization is reported and possible background mechanisms are discussed.

In this paper we report on the competition in metal surface hardening between the femtosecond shock peening on the one hand, and formation of laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) and surface oxidation on the other hand. Peening of the stainless steel AISI 316 due to shock loading induced by femtosecond laser ablation was successfully demonstrated. However, for some range of processing parameters, surface erosion due to LIPSS and oxidation seem to dominate over the peening effect. Strategies to increase the peening efficiency are discussed.