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Modeling pulsed laser ablation of aluminum with finite element analysis

considering material moving front

Article  in  International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer · October 2017

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2017.06.056

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 International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 113 (2017) 1246–1253

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

Modeling pulsed laser ablation of aluminum with finite element analysis

considering material moving front
Yeqing Wang a,⇑, Ninggang Shen b, Getachew K. Befekadu a,c, Crystal L. Pasiliao c
a
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida, Research and Engineering Education Facility, Shalimar, FL 32579, USA
b
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
c
Air Force Research Laboratory, Munitions Directorate, Eglin AFB, FL 32542, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: During the pulsed laser ablation (PLA) of solid materials, the surface of the target material progressively
Received 7 March 2017 recedes which in turn necessitates to account for the moving front boundary in the formulation of the
Received in revised form 9 June 2017 laser heat conduction problem. Hence, developing an accurate predictive simulation model that captures
Accepted 14 June 2017
the material moving front and updates simultaneously the laser source boundary conditions is an impor-
Available online 22 June 2017
tant and yet challenging task. In this paper, the PLA of aluminum is formulated and modeled with finite
element analysis (FEA) that considers the instant material removal during the ablation process. Here, the
Keywords:
implementation of such an FEA enables a strong coupling between the progressive surface recession (i.e.,
Pulsed laser ablation
Finite element method
the shape change of the target material) and the laser heat conduction. Moreover, the proposed numerical
Moving boundary condition simulation model not only predicts the progressive surface recession due to the material evaporation in
Material evaporation the low laser fluence regime, but it also captures the ablation depth due to the material phase explosion
Material phase explosion in the high laser fluence regime. In addition, the temperature-dependent material and optical properties
Laser-aluminum interaction of the aluminum target are considered in the simulation. With nanosecond Nd:YAG 266 and 193 nm laser
pulses, simulations are performed for the PLA of aluminum under various laser fluence. The predicted
ablation depths under low laser fluence clearly show better agreement with experimental data, when
compared to other predictions based on the hydrodynamics simulation model. Furthermore, the pre-
dicted threshold of the material phase transition in the high laser fluence regime also shows a good
degree of consistency with experimental data.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The recent rapid development of pulsed laser ablation (PLA)
techniques have proven in wide-range applications such as film
deposition [1], nanomaterial production [2], and material machin-
ing and processing [3–5]. To optimize the performance of the PLA
applications, the ablation mechanisms of the solid materials have
been extensively investigated during the past two decades
[6–12]. The two most widely recognized ablation mechanisms in
the literature are the evaporation and the material phase explo-
sion, in which the material phase explosion occurs in the high laser
fluence regime, when a certain fluence threshold is reached [6–12].
Despite in-depth investigations on the ablation mechanisms,
developing an accurate and high-fidelity PLA predictive model is
still lagging behind due to the tight coupling between the contin-
uous material removal and the laser heat conduction. In particular,
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: yeqwang@reef.ufl.edu (Y. Wang).
the target surface continuously recedes due to the evaporation and
the material phase explosion, which results in a moving boundary
condition in the formulation of the laser heat conduction problem.
Here, the laser energy flows into the target material also needs to
be updated simultaneously as the moving front progressively pro-
ceeds. In the existing PLA simulation studies [10,13–16], the mate-
rial removal is often decoupled from the laser heat conduction.
More specifically, the temperature field is calculated using a heat
transfer analysis without considering the shape change due to
material removal. That is, the temperature field is used to obtain
the ablation rate with Hertz-Knudsen equation, while the ablation
depth is obtained by calculating the integral of the ablation rate
over time. This decoupling scheme may result in an underestima-
tion of the ablation depth because the laser energy is dissipated
through the material, where it is supposed to be instantly removed
during PLA. In addition, many existing simulation studies [15–17]
focus on modeling PLA only in the low laser fluence regime, for
which the material removal is dominated by surface evaporation.
Only recently, some attempts [10,14] have been made to model

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2017.06.056
0017-9310/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Y. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 113 (2017) 1246–1253 1247

PLA in the high laser fluence regime, for which the material Laser Laser
removal is heavily attributed to the material phase explosion. Lu beam beam
et al. [10] proposed that the thickness of the superheated liquid O x O x
layer (i.e., the region where the temperature is above 0.9 times
the critical temperature Tc) can be taken as the ablation depth
due to the material phase explosion in the case when the thickness Moving d(x=0)
exceeds the critical diameter of the vapor bubbles. Moreover, the front
problem was solved using the decoupled scheme in which the
shape change of the target material is not predicted simultane- z z
ously with the temperature field. Later, Gragossian et al. [14] pro- (a) In the beginning of
(b) during laser ablation
posed to predict the ablation depth due to the material phase laser ablation
explosion by instantly removing the material once the temperature
reaches above 0.9Tc. Note that the assumption of material removal Fig. 1. Laser-material interaction considering moving front due to material
removal.
at a fixed temperature during material phase explosion was not
theoretically justified and, hence, such an assumption may not of the target material (i.e., z0 = z
d, with d is the corresponding
accurately represent the real physics. ablation depth), and I0 is the instant laser irradiance [6,14]. Further-
In the current paper, a PLA model is proposed with two- more, for the Nd:YAG laser studied in the current paper, the tempo-
dimensional (2D) finite element analysis (FEA). The FEA implemen- ral profile of the laser irradiance has the following form:
tation utilizes a strong coupling scheme, which predicts the shape

7 

change of the target material and solves the temperature field t t
I0 ðtÞ ¼ Imax exp 7 1
; ð3Þ
simultaneously; and thus allows more accurate predictions, when t max t max
compared to the existing decoupling scheme in the literature. In
addition, the proposed model also enables the prediction of abla- where Imax is the peak irradiance of the laser pulse and tmax is the
tion depth induced by the material phase explosion in the high time when the laser irradiance reaches to its peak value [14].
laser fluence regime. Here, the temperature-dependent material The ablation rate s_ in (1) represents the rate of material removal
and optical properties of the target material are also taken into during the PLA process. The mechanisms of PLA have been exten-
account in the proposed model. The predicted ablation depths in sively investigated in many experimental studies [7–9,11–13,19],
the low laser fluence regime using the proposed model show better where the reported mechanisms are due to the evaporation and
agreement with experimental data, when compared to the predic- the material phase explosion. In particular, when under low laser
tions obtained from the simulations based on the hydrodynamics fluence conditions, the material removal is predominantly attribu-
model. Moreover, the predicted threshold of the material phase ted to evaporation, where the corresponding ablation rate s_ can be
explosion in the high laser fluence regime also shows a good described by using the Hertz-Knudsen equation:
degree of consistency with experimental data. rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 

m Pb mLv 1 1
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the s_ ¼ b exp
; ð4Þ
2pkB T q kB T b T
problem formulation for the PLA of solid materials is provided. In
Section 3, an FEA numerical approach is introduced, where such where b is the vaporization coefficient, m is the atomic mass of the
an approach enables a strong coupling between the material pro- target solid material, kB is the Boltzmann constant, Lv is the latent
gressive surface recession and the heat conduction. Moreover, heat of vaporization of the material, and Tb is the boiling tempera-
the temperature-dependent material and optical properties of the ture at the pressure Pb, and Pb = 1.01  105 Pa [20,21].
target material are also discussed in this section. In Section 4, For the case when the laser fluence is sufficiently high, the
numerical simulation studies are presented, and the simulation phase explosion of the target material is observed during or after
results are further compared with experimental data and other the laser pulse, which results in a rapid increase of ablation rate
predictions reported based on the hydrodynamics considerations. [7,10,11]. However, the mechanisms of the laser-induced material
Finally, Section 5 provides some conclusions. phase explosion were not well characterized and, in general, there
are no explicit formulations that can be used to describe the abla-
2. Problem formulation tion rate due to the phase explosion. In this paper, the ablation
depth due to the material evaporation, under both high and low
The absorption of laser energy induces a rapid temperature rise laser fluence conditions, is predicted using (4) with a finite element
on the surface of the solid material. In the absence of convective analysis (FEA) that considers the moving front (see Section 3.2).
and radiative heat exchanges, the thermal response of the solid The additional ablation depth due to the material phase explosion
material is governed by the following energy balance equation under high laser fluence condition is estimated by checking the
[6,14,18]: predicted temperature fields (see also Section 3.3 for detailed

 discussions).
@T @T Moreover, the initial and boundary conditions for the current
qC p
s_ _

r  ðkrTÞ ¼ q; ð1Þ
@t @z 2D problem are:

where q is the solid density, Cp is the specific heat, T is the temper- Tðx; z; tÞjt¼0 ¼ T a ; ð5Þ
ature, s_ is the surface recession rate (i.e., the ablation rate due to 

material removal), z is the coordinate normal to the material surface @Tðx; z; tÞ @Tðx; z; tÞ
(see also Fig. 1), k is the thermal conductivity, t is time, and q_ is the  ¼  ¼ 0; ð6Þ
@x x¼
l=2 @z 
rate of energy density input from the laser beam, which is essen- z¼h

tially a laser-induced body heat flux, and expressed as: 

@Tðx; z; tÞ
q_ ¼ að1
Rf ÞI0 ðtÞe
az0
; ð2Þ
k
@z  ¼ LV qs_ ; ð7Þ
z¼0

where a and Rf are, respectively, the absorption coefficient and the where Ta is the room temperature, i.e., Ta = 300 K, l and h are,
reflectivity, z’ is the vertical distance from any points to the surface respectively, the length and thickness of the target domain. Eq.
1248 Y. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 113 (2017) 1246–1253
(6) represents the adiabatic boundary conditions on both the verti-
cal side and the bottom surfaces, while (7) represents the heat loss
on the top surface of the target material due to vaporization
[6,14,17,18]. Note that the internal energy due to the reduction of
the volume and mass of the target material is automatically
accounted for when the model is numerically implemented (see
detailed discussions in Section 3.2). Moreover, the heat flux conti-
nuity through the target surface (7) does not include the laser
energy input since the rate of the laser energy input is defined as
a body heat flux (see (1) and (2)), not as an incident surface heat
flux. It should also be noted that the density, q, in (7) represents
the local density values of the surface nodes. In addition, due to
the axial symmetry of the problem, only half of the target domain
is modeled in the numerical simulation in order to reduce the com-
putational cost.
3. Numerical implementation
3.1. Implementation of laser-induced body heat flux and surface heat
flux loss due to material evaporation with FEA
Finite element analysis (FEA) of pulsed laser ablation (PLA) is
performed using ABAQUS. The implementation of the FEA is sup-
plemented by two user subroutines. The first one is DFLUX [22],
which enables us to accurately define the laser-induced body heat
flux (2) and the surface heat flux loss due to vaporization (7). Fur-
ther, in the DFLUX subroutine, special care should be taken when
defining the body heat flux (2), in which the coordinate z0
(z0 = z
d) moves as the surface of the target material progressively
recedes (see also Fig. 1). Therefore, the instant coordinate z0 needs
to be updated after each time increment using:
z0ðkþ1Þ ¼ z0ðkÞ
s_ Dt;
where k, with k = 0, 1, 2. . ., is the increment number, s_ is the abla-
tion rate (4), and Dt is the time increment (i.e., the DTIME variable
in the DFLUX subroutine). The product of the ablation rate and the
time increment represents the ablation depth (d) of the material
surface at the current increment. In the DFLUX subroutine, the body
heat flux (2) and surface heat flux (7) are separately called at each
time increment using the heat flux type identifier JLTYP (e.g., JLTYP
equals zero for the surface heat flux, while JLTYP equals one for the
body heat flux).
3.2. Track moving front: coupling between shape change and heat
conduction
The second user subroutine is UMESHMOTION [22], which
enables us to capture the progressive shape change of the target
surface during PLA by defining the velocity of the surface nodes
(i.e., the nodes associated to the top surface of the target material)
based on the instant ablation rate (4). The new position of each
surface node after each time increment is obtained by:
" # " #  
v xkþ1 v kx s_ x
¼
A ; ð9Þ
v ykþ1 v ky s_
" # " #
xkþ1 v xkþ1
¼  Dt;
ykþ1 v ykþ1
where vx and vy are the velocity of the receding surface in the x- and
y-directions, respectively (i.e., the ULOCAL variable in the UMESH-
MOTION subroutine), x and y are, respectively, the displacement
of receding surface in the x- and y-directions, k is the increment
number, with k = 0, 1, 2. . ., A is the directional cosine tensor (i.e.,
the ALOCAL variable in the UMESHMOTION subroutine), s_ x is the
ablation rate in the x-direction, which equals zero in the case when
the laser beam is applied perpendicularly to the target surface, and s_
is the ablation rate (4) in the direction normal to the target surface.
In addition to the UMESHMOTION subroutine, the Arbitrary
Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) adaptive remesh algorithm is enabled
us to generate the new mesh after each time increment in parallel
to the movement of the surface nodes (i.e., Eqs. (9) and (10)). The
ALE adaptive remesh algorithm helps to smooth the mesh and also
control the mesh distortion. However, severe mesh distortion can
still occur, when the expected ablation depth exceeds more than
half of the thickness of the target material or a large time incre-
ment is used. Therefore, to avoid severe mesh distortion, the com-
putational domain needs to be comparatively larger than the
expected ablation depth and the time increment also needs to be
sufficiently small. In practice, sufficiently small time increments
could also ensure the numerical accuracy. For example, if the time
increment decreases from 1 s to 0.001 s, the percentage error
between the predicted mesh displacement and the exact ablation
depth (i.e., the product of the constant ablation rate and the time)
can decrease from 97.4% to 2.7% for the case with constant ablation
rate of 1 mm/s and duration of 1 s [23].
By implementing the UMESHMOTION subroutine as well as the
ALE adaptive remesh algorithm in the FEA, the temperature solu-
tion is used to obtain the instant ablation rate after each time
increment. The surface nodes move to their new locations accord-
ing to (9) and (10) based on the instant ablation rate, hence, the
volume and the mass of the target material are also reduced
accordingly. Meanwhile, the entire computational domain after
the surface nodes movement is re-meshed using the ALE adaptive
remesh algorithm. The new mesh is used to solve the laser heat
conduction for the next time increment. In this way, the tight cou-
pling between the progressive surface recession and the laser heat
ð8Þ conduction is achieved. Note that the ablated material is com-
pletely removed from the simulation domain, and the reduction
of the internal energy due to the removal of the target material
is automatically accounted for when this numerical procedure is
used. The schematic of the numerical procedure is shown in Fig. 2.
3.3. Numerical treatment of material phase explosion
It has been reported [6,7,10–12] that the target materials
undergo phase explosion if the applied irradiance of the laser beam
exceeds a certain threshold. The induced extreme high tempera-
ture (>0.9Tc) on the target surface leads to the formation of a
Heat conduction Shape change
Solve heat transfer Re-mesh
k=k+1
equation at computational
increment k (use domain with ALE
DFLUX subroutine adaptive remesh
to define (2) and (7)) algorithm
Get instant ablation
ð10Þ
Get the temperature rate ṡ and move
solution at surface nodes using
increment k, and (9) and (10) with
plug it into (4) UMESHMOTION
subroutine
Fig. 2. Coupled heat conduction and shape change numerical scheme using
UMESHMOTION subroutine and ALE adaptive remesh algorithm in ABAQUS.
 Y. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 113 (2017) 1246–1253
superheated metastable liquid layer (see also Fig. 3). Once formed,
the liquid metal becomes almost transparent to the incident laser
irradiation, and the laser body heat flux penetrates through the
transparent layer (i.e., the superheated liquid layer) to the underly-
ing material [12]. To capture this thermal transparency in the
numerical simulation model, the thermal conductivity of the target
material is assumed to increase to 1  105 W/(m K) once the tem-
perature of the material reaches 0.9Tc.
At the same time, homogenous bubble nucleation takes place in
the superheated layer, which eventually leads to the expulsion of
liquid metal from within the melt pool (i.e., the occurrence of the
material phase explosion). One common hypothesis regarding
the threshold of phase explosion is to check whether the radius
of vapor bubble grows to a critical radius rc. Once the bubbles of
size rc are formed, they experience a rapid transition into a mixture
of vapor and liquid particulates which results in the melt expulsion
(i.e., the material phase explosion). The critical radius rc is given by:
2r
rc ¼ ; ð11Þ
Psat ðT l Þ expfv l ½Pl
Psat ðT l Þ=Rs T l g
P l
where r is the surface tension coefficient, Psat is the saturation pres-
sure at the superheated liquid temperature, Tl is the temperature of
the superheated liquid, Pl is the pressure of the superheated liquid,
vl is the specific volume of the liquid, i.e., vl = 1/ql, with ql is the den-
sity of the superheated liquid/vapor, and Rs is the specific gas con-
stant. The critical radius of aluminum vapor bubble has been
calculated by Shen et al. [5] using the above equation and was
reported to be within 1.99 to 2.57 lm.
In the current study, the same hypothesis of checking the
threshold of the material phase explosion for PLA is considered
(i.e., whether the thickness of the superheated liquid layer exceeds
the critical diameter of the vapor bubbles). During the FEA imple-
mentation, the laser-induced body heat flux (2) is immediately
removed from the model at the end of the laser pulse. After the
laser source is removed, the temperature is then allowed to cool
down naturally without imposing any extra boundary conditions.
Both during and after the laser pulse, the development of the
superheated liquid layer is estimated by checking the evolution
of the area, where the temperature is above 0.9Tc. If the thickness
of the superheated liquid layer is larger than the critical diameter
(i.e., 3.98–5.14 lm [5]), then it is considered that the phase explo-
sion occurs, and the thickness of the superheated liquid layer is
considered to be removed by phase explosion. Therefore, the pre-
dicted total ablation depth is estimated by adding up the following
two portions: (i) the ablation depth due to the evaporation; and (ii)
Laser
beam
Evaporation
front
Transparent
T >0.9Tc superheated
liquid
Transparency
front
Tm<T≤0.9Tc Liquid
Melt
front
Ta<T ≤ Tm Solid
Fig. 3. The different material phases of the target material in the presence of
transparent superheated liquid (Ta denotes room temperature).
1249
the thickness of the ejected superheated liquid layer by the phase
explosion.
3.4. Computational domain, mesh size, and computational time
The computational domain of the problem is 75 lm long (x-
direction) and 10 lm thick (z-direction), which represents the left
half of the target material (i.e., for the domain x  0 in Fig. 1). The
domain is meshed with ABAQUS CPE4T elements (i.e., the 4-node
plane strain coupled temperature-displacement elements). To bal-
ance the accuracy and computational cost, the meshes at the
region near the heated surface are refined (with mesh size of
0.8 lm by 0.05 lm) and more coarse mesh is used far away from
the heated surface (with mesh size of 0.8 lm by 0.5 lm). The
meshing results in a total of 7990 elements. The mesh size used
in the current simulation provides sufficient accuracy based on
preliminary mesh refinement studies. In addition, the FEA consists
of two steps, the first step captures the temperature and the sur-
face recession histories of the target material during PLA, while
the second step represents a cool down step (100 ns), when the
laser pulse is removed from the target surface. Note that the cool
down of the target material is a result of (i) the surface to ambient
radiation, and (ii) the thermal conduction due to the heat sink
effect from the material below the molten pool. The maximum
allowable temperature change per time increment is set to 50 K
and 100 K for the first and second steps, respectively. The compu-
tation is performed on a laptop with dual core and 16 GB RAM. The
computational time is strongly dependent on the peak irradiance
of the laser source. As the laser irradiance increases, the tempera-
ture rises drastically. In order to satisfy the maximum allowable
temperature change per time increment, a smaller time increment
needs to be used. Therefore, applying a higher irradiance laser
beam would lead to a significant increase of computational time.
For a pulsed laser with fluence of 5 J/cm2 and pulse duration of
12 ns, the computation takes up to 6 h.
3.5. Material and optical properties
The target material considered in this study is pure aluminum.
Such a choice is because the PLA experimental data under different
laser fluence is available in the literature [7,9,13,19], which allows
us to validate our FEA approach. Meanwhile, the simulation results
using the hydrodynamics method are also available in the litera-
ture [13], which further allow us to compare the predictions using
the current FEA approach with those obtained using the hydrody-
namics method. Moreover, the material properties of aluminum
have been well investigated up to date, which provide us compar-
atively more confidence in using those material properties for
accurate predictions. Table 1 lists the temperature-dependent
material properties of the aluminum target (i.e., density, thermal
conductivity, specific heat, melting and boiling temperature, boil-
ing pressure, vaporization coefficient, latent heat of vaporization,
critical temperature, and critical density) that are used in the cur-
rent simulation.
The laser source applied in the simulation is an Nd:YAG pulsed
laser with wavelength of 193 and 266 nm. The corresponding
durations of the laser pulse are 12 ns and 6 ns, respectively. The
laser beam is a Gaussian beam with a spatial profile of
q_  expð
7:6x2 =r2 Þ, where r is the radius of the laser beam,
r = 50 lm. Such a Gaussian profile is chosen by fitting the spatial
profile of the laser beam determined from experimental tests
[26]. The absorption coefficient and reflectivity of aluminum are
temperature and wavelength-dependent, and they are calculated
using the Drude model [13,27] with real and imaginary parts of
the refractive index, respectively. Table 2 lists the calculated
1250 Y. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 113 (2017) 1246–1253

Table 1
Material properties of aluminum used in the simulation.

Material property Temperature Unit

Melting temperature Tm = 933 [14] K
Critical temperature Tc = 8860 [24] K
Critical density qc = 300 [24] kg/m3
Density q = 2700 [14] T  Tm kg/m3
q = qc(1 + 0.75(1-T/Tc) + 3(1-T/Tc)1/3) [14] Tm < T  Tc kg/m3
Specific heat Cp = 0.5203T + 643.9 [25] T  Tm J/(kgK)
Cp = 1160 [25] Tm < T  Tc J/(kgK)
Thermal conductivity Data from Ref. [19] W/(mK)
Boiling temperature Tb = 2743 [5] K
Boiling pressure Pb = 1.01  105 [20] Pa
Vaporization coefficient b = 0.82 [21]
Latent heat of vaporization Lv = 10.78 [5] MJ/kg

Table 2 the ablation depth and the temperature in the center (i.e., x = 0,
Absorption coefficients and reflectivity of aluminum under the 266 nm wavelength z0 = 0; see also Fig. 1) of the target surface. It can be observed that
laser. the temperature starts to increase rapidly at t = 0.5 ns, and then
Temperature, K Absorption coefficient, 1/m Reflectivity (%) reaches to an approximate steady state of around 8700 K within
1 ns, and finally it drops to 7270 K at the end of the laser pulse.
300 3.83  108 80.00
933 3.83  108 77.20 The ablation depth is 1.145 lm. Fig. 5 illustrates the progressive
2000 3.55  108 72.47 surface recession of the target material at various times. Fig. 6 pro-
4000 3.01  108 63.61 vides the evolution of temperature on the target surface at various
6000 2.48  108 54.75
times. In addition, Fig. 7 shows the contour plots of the
8860 3.83  106 42.07

0.2
absorption coefficient and reflectivity of the aluminum under the
266 nm wavelength laser that are used in the current simulation. 0
To predict the surface recession of aluminum from the evaporation
Surface recession (µm)

to the material phase explosion, both low and high laser fluence -0.2
conditions are considered. The corresponding simulation results
are shown and discussed in Sections 4.1 and 4.2, respectively. -0.4

t=2 ns
-0.6
4. Simulation results and comparisons with experimental data t=3 ns
-0.8 t=4 ns
4.1. Low laser fluence regime
t=5 ns
-1
Under low laser fluence conditions, the surface recession of the t=6 ns
target material is predominantly attributed to material evapora- -1.2
tion (4). The temperature and surface recession histories of alu- -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0
minum target due to a pulse of Nd:YAG laser (266 nm Distance from center (µm)
wavelength and 6 ns duration) with fluence of 22.68 J/cm2 are
shown in Figs. 4–7. In particular, Fig. 4 shows the evolution of Fig. 5. Ablation profiles of the aluminum target at various times (with laser
wavelength 266 nm, fluence 22.68 J/cm2, duration 6 ns).

10000 0.2
10000
9000 t=2 ns
0 9000
8000 t=3 ns
8000
Ablation depth (µm)

-0.2
Temperature (K)

7000 t=4 ns
7000
Temperature (K)

6000 t=5 ns
-0.4 6000
5000 t=6 ns
-0.6 5000
4000
4000
3000 -0.8
3000
2000
-1 2000
1000
1000
0 -1.2
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 0
Time (ns) -70 -60 -50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0
Distance from center (µm)
Fig. 4. Temperature and ablation histories in the center (i.e., x = 0 and z’ = 0) of the
aluminum target (with laser wavelength 266 nm, fluence 22.68 J/cm2, duration Fig. 6. Temperature profiles on the surface of the aluminum target at various times
6 ns). (with laser wavelength 266 nm, fluence 22.68 J/cm2, duration 6 ns).
 Y. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 113 (2017) 1246–1253 1251

1 µm

(a) t=3 ns (b) t=4 ns

(c) t=5 ns (d) t=6 ns

Fig. 7. Contour plots of temperature distributions in the aluminum target at various times (with laser wavelength 266 nm, fluence 22.68 J/cm2, duration 6 ns).

10000 1.4

9000 During laser pulse, 3 ns

1.2
8000
0.9Tc During laser pulse, 6 ns
After laser pulse, 1 ns

Ablation depth (µm)

7000 1
Temperature (K)

After laser pulse, 6 ns

6000
0.8
5000

4000 0.6

3000
0.4 Experimental data from Ref. [9]
2000
Current simulation data
1000 0.2
Prediction from Ref. [13]
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 0
5 10 15 20 25
Instant target thickness (µm)
Laser fluence (J/cm2)
Fig. 8. Temperature profiles through instant target thickness at x = 0 (where, zero
thickness denotes the instant receding surface) at 3 and 6 ns during the laser pulse, Fig. 9. Predicted ablation depths under 10.26, 13.74, 17.70, and 22.68 J/cm2 of
and at 1 and 6 ns after the completion of the laser pulse (with laser wavelength 266 nm wavelength laser pulses (duration 6 ns): comparison with experimental
266 nm, fluence 22.68 J/cm2, duration 6 ns). data [9] and simulation results using hydrodynamics [13].

1.4
temperature distributions within the aluminum target at t = 3, 4, 5,
and 6 ns. As can be seen from this figure, it also captures the con- 1.2
tinuous surface recession due to the material evaporation. To illus-
trate the evolution of the superheated liquid layer, the temperature
Ablation depth (µm)

1
profiles across the instant thickness of the aluminum target
(where, zero thickness denotes the instant receding surface) at dif- 0.8
ferent times are provided in Fig. 8. The thickness of the super-
heated liquid layer is taken as the thickness where the
0.6
temperature is above 7088 K (i.e., 0.9Tc). As can be seen from this
figure, the thickness of the superheated liquid layer during the
0.4
laser pulse is approximately 0.025 lm, which is much smaller than Experimental data from Ref. [9]
the critical diameter (i.e., 0.22 lm) of the vapor bubble. After the
0.2 Current simulation data
completion of the laser pulse, the temperature of the target surface
quickly drops to 3000 K within 1 ns. Therefore, it implies that a
0
phase explosion is unlikely to occur under the current laser pulse.
0 5 10 15 20 25
In addition to the aforementioned simulation case study with
Laser fluence (J/cm2)
laser fluence of 22.68 J/cm2, additional simulations are carried
out to predict the ablation depths of the aluminum target under Fig. 10. Predicted ablation depths under 5.40, 13.20, and 23.04 J/cm2 of 193 nm
different fluence with 266 and 193 nm wavelength pulsed lasers. wavelength laser pulses (duration 12 ns): comparison with experimental data [9].
Fig. 9 shows the predicted ablation depths under fluence of
10.26, 13.74, 17.70, and 22.68 J/cm2 with 266 nm wavelength laser
pulse, respectively. These predicted ablation depths are compared those obtained from the simulations using the hydrodynamics
to those obtained from both experimental tests [9] and the simula- method. In addition, as shown in Fig. 10, the predicted ablation
tions using the hydrodynamics method [13]. It can be noticed that depths of the aluminum target under fluence of 5.40, 13.20, and
the ablation depths predicted using the current FEA approach show 23.04 J/cm2 with 193 nm wavelength laser pulse also compare
a better agreement with experimental data, when compared to favorably with experimental data.
1252 Y. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 113 (2017) 1246–1253

0.5 10

9
0
8

Ablation depth (µm)

Ablation depth (µm)

7
-0.5
6

-1 5

4
-1.5 3

2
-2
1

0
-2.5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70

Time (ns) Laser fluence (J/cm2)

Fig. 11. Ablation history due to material evaporation in the center (x = 0 and z’ = 0) Fig. 13. Ablation depth as a function of laser fluence (with laser wavelength
of the aluminum target (with laser wavelength 266 nm, fluence 60 J/cm2, duration 266 nm, duration 6 ns).
6 ns).

pates and the thickness of the superheated layer is dropped to

10000 about 3 lm within 2 ns after the completion of laser pulse, which
During laser is below the critical bubble diameter. Therefore, this in turn
9000
pulse, 3 ns implies that the phase explosion should occur quickly at or around
8000 0.9Tc the end of the laser pulse under the current PLA condition, and the
During laser
7000
superheated liquid layer is considered to be entirely ejected from
pulse, 6 ns
Temperature (K)

the melt pool. One additional case with fluence of 65 J/cm2 also
6000 After laser shows that the thickness of the superheated liquid layer exceeds
pulse, 2 ns the critical diameter of the vapor bubbles around the end of the
5000
laser pulse (i.e., the occurrence of the phase explosion). Here, the
4000
total ablation depths under high laser fluence cases are taken as
3000 the sum of the ablation depth due to the evaporation and the thick-
ness of the ejected superheated layer. The ablation depth as a func-
2000
tion of the laser fluence in both the low and high laser fluence
1000 regimes is provided in Fig. 13. It can be noticed that a sudden
0 increase of the ablation rate is captured using the current FEA
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 approach, when laser fluence increases from 57 J/cm2 to 60 J/cm2.
Instant target thickness (µm) This threshold fluence is in agreement with the range of the phase
explosion threshold (i.e., 50–325 J/cm2) for various metals reported
Fig. 12. Temperature profiles across instant target thickness (x = 0, zero thickness in Ref. [8].
denotes the instant receding surface) at 3 and 6 ns during the laser pulse, and at
2 ns after the completion of the laser pulse (with laser wavelength 266 nm, fluence
60 J/cm2, duration 6 ns).
5. Conclusion

4.2. High laser fluence regime
The current FEA numerical approach also enables to capture the
rapid increase of ablation rate due to the transition from the evap-
oration to the material phase explosion during the PLA process.
Fig. 11 shows the ablation history in the aluminum target due to
material evaporation during the laser pulse. As one can see that
the ablation depth due to the evaporation reaches 2.11 lm at the
end of the laser pulse (i.e., at the end of the first step). Fig. 12 shows
the temperature profiles across the instant target thickness (where,
zero thickness denotes the instant receding surface) at different
times for a 266 nm pulsed laser with fluence of 60 J/cm2. It can
be noticed that the thickness of the superheated liquid layer (i.e.,
the region where the temperature is above 0.9Tc) develops from
about 1 lm to 4.2 lm from 3 ns during the laser pulse to the end
of the laser pulse (i.e., 6 ns). The thickness at the end of the laser
pulse reaches within the range of critical bubble diameter 3.98–
5.14 lm [5], which indicates that a phase explosion is very likely
to occur at or around the end of the laser pulse. Meanwhile, it is
also shown in Fig. 12 that if the phase explosion does not occur
at the end of the laser pulse, then the temperature quickly dissi-
In this paper, the problem of heat conduction in solid materials
during pulsed laser ablation (PLA) has been formulated and mod-
eled with finite element analysis (FEA), which considers the instant
material removal (i.e., the material moving front boundary) during
the ablation process. The implementation of the FEA was supple-
mented by the UMESHMOTION and DFLUX user subroutines in
ABAQUS. The UMESHMOTION subroutine enabled a strong cou-
pling between the progressive shape change and the heat conduc-
tion, while the DFLUX subroutine enabled the instant update of
laser source boundary conditions after material removal. Simula-
tions have been performed for the PLA of aluminum targets with
Nd:YAG 266 and 193 nm lasers under various laser fluence levels.
The predicted ablation depths under low laser fluence have clearly
shown better agreement with experimental data, when compared
to those reported using the hydrodynamics simulations. Further-
more, simulation results have also captured the transition from
the evaporation to the material phase explosion at or around a flu-
ence of 60 J/cm2. This threshold fluence is consistent with experi-
mental data. Here, it is also worth mentioning that the plasma
shielding during the PLA may have a significant impact on the
threshold of material phase explosion. The investigation of the
 Y. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 113 (2017) 1246–1253
effects of plasma shielding on the threshold of material phase tran-
sition and ablation depth using the proposed FEA approach will be
a subject of our future research.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by the Air Force Research
Laboratory (AFRL) under prime contract no. FA8651-08-D-0108
and task order no. 42. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or rec-
ommendations expressed in this work are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of the AFRL.
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