Simulation of the laser drilling process with the Constraint Natural Element Method

Abstract

These works present a numerical alternative to the simulation of the laser drilling process. The use of the finite element method to modeling the hole creation during a laser pulse shows difficulties in front of a moving boundary problem. This moving boundary is induced by a fast phase transformation and also by high thermal gradient. The C-NEM (Constraint Natural Element Method) was tested in order to solve these numerical difficulties and to use the high potential of this original method. The physical interaction of the laser drilling will be reminded and the chosen mathematical model will be specified. A simulation was made with the data for pure iron in order to validate the numerical choice.