Laser surface modification of alumina: Integrated computational and experimental analysis

In this work, both computational heat transfer model and experimental investigations were used for understanding the evolution of microstructures of the laser processed alumina with a single laser track, subjected to various processing conditions (64–128×106 J/m2). The influence of laser energy density on the change of surface temperature and cooling rate of laser processed alumina samples were extracted. Furthermore, the modeling results were correlated to determine the variation on the surface topography, grain size, and porosity formation. The results indicated that, by controlling the laser energy density, more multi-faceted grains were formed with less porosity.