Design and Flow Analysis of Laser Cutting Supersonic Nozzles
J. Hu, M. Qiu, F. Liu and Z. Yao
The influence of the processing parameters on the dynamic characteristic of supersonic impinging jets in laser cutting is studied numerically. Numerical simulations are carried out using an explicit coupled solution algorithm with a solution-based mesh adaptation. The characteristics of the pressure distribution and mach disk position are analysed for simple nozzles and complicated nozzles based on the Hall design method and the difference of dynamic characteristics of gas flow is compared particularly. The difference in dynamic characteristics between two nozzles is smaller with an increase in the working pressure. Although the cut quality and capacity of a complicated nozzle are slightly better than the cut quality and capacity of a simple nozzle, the simple supersonic nozzle replaces the complicated supersonic nozzle in reducing the cost of laser cutting under high pressure conditions.
Keywords: Laser machining, supersonic nozzle, shock, throat section.