Mass Loss Behaviour of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) Irradiated by a Continuous Wave (CW) CO2 Laser Beam
W-J. Lei, H-H. Zhu, P-P. Hu, C. Li and C. Dai
The destroyed behaviour of carbon fibre reinforced plastic under laser irradiate has attracted more and more attentions since its special military goals. The mass loss behaviour of carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) irradiated by continuous wave (CW) CO2 laser has been investigated experimentally in this paper. The effects of the process parameters such as laser intensity, irradiated time and spot size on the mass loss behaviour and surface morphologies of the CFRP irradiated by CO2 laser have been investigated experimentally in this paper. The results show that mass loss increases with the increasing of both laser irradiation time and laser intensity. However, the slope of the curve, mass loss versus irradiation time, is high both under the low and high laser intensity, and is very low in the middle of laser intensity, this is believed to be caused by that the mass loss is the sum of the contribution of resin decomposing and the sublimating of the fibre. When the laser intensity increases, the increment of mass loss increases either with airflow or not, but the mass loss without airflow is smaller than that with airflow when the laser intensity is high. When keeping constant of laser power and irradiation time, as the laser spot size increases, mass loss reduces at first but gradually increases when the laser spot size gets to a certain value.
Keywords: CO2 laser, carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP), mass loss, laser irradiation, surface morphology, process parameters