Evaporative Cutting of a Semitransparent Body With a Moving CW Laser

The formation of a groove by partial evaporation of a moving semi-infinite and semitransparent solid is considered. Evaporative removal of material is achieved by focusing a high-power, highly concentrated Gaussian laser beam of continuous wave (CW) onto the surface of the solid. Surface heat losses due to radiation and convection are assumed to be negligible, and conductive losses are treated in an approximate fashion using a simple integral method. The relevant nonlinear partial differential equations are solved numerically, and results for groove depth and shape are presented for a variety of laser and solid parameters.