Characteristics of the plume particles removed by a swirling flow nozzle in laser ablation

The plume particles removed by a swirling flow nozzle in laser ablation have been characterized with numerical and experimental approaches in this paper. The swirling flow was simulated by a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software with RNG k-ε turbulent model. The air flow passed through a specifically designed swirling flow nozzle and impinged on the substrate with various inlet velocities. The trajectories of the plume particles with various diameters in the flow field were calculated and compared with the flow visualization in the experiments. The results show that the velocity distribution of the swirling flow on the substrate was significantly affected by the swirling strength of the flow. It shows that the plasma plume was removed efficiently and the surface roughness was significantly reduced by the implementation of swirling flow in laser ablation.