Drilling of CFRP plates with adjustable pulse duration fiber laser

CFRP plates are important advanced material used in the aerospace field, high-quality and high-efficiency drilling is the main application processing demand of CFRP. In this paper, a 532 nm nanosecond fiber laser with adjustable pulse duration is used and the scanning path was planned as Z-direction up-bottom incremental cutting, and X-Y direction concentric circle cutting scanning mode to realize the CFRP plates hole drilling, and obtain high drilling performance. The mechanisms of material removal for CFRP plates hole drilling under 532 nm nanosecond laser is explored, and it is mainly attributed to thermal evaporation accompanied by certain heating carbonization. The results show that a narrow width of HAZ can be obtained with short pulse duration, the minimum value of HAZ width at hole entrance edge is 18.74 mu m, and the matrix material damage near the HAZ becomes small. Reducing the pulse duration also helps to decrease the drilling taper (minimum taper value 0.046), the taper of the drilling hole is smaller than that of the drilling dicing. But the drilling efficiency is reduced due to the low pulse energy with short pulse duration.

Automated summary

The use of a 532 nm nanosecond fiber laser for CFRP plates drilling can achieve high-efficiency and high-quality results, adjusting the pulse duration can reduce the HAZ width and decrease drill hole taper, but it can also reduce drilling efficiency.