Enhancement of airborne shock wave by laser-induced breakdown of liquid column in laser shock cleaning

In laser shock cleaning (LSC), the shock wave is generated by laser-induced breakdown of the ambient gas. The shock wave intensity has thus been a factor limiting the performance of the LSC process. In this work, a novel method of amplifying a laser-induced plasma–generated shock wave by the breakdown of a liquid column is proposed and analyzed. When the laser beam is focused on a microscale liquid column, a shock wave having a significantly amplified intensity compared to that generated by air breakdown alone can be generated in air. Therefore, substantially amplified cleaning force can be obtained. The dynamics of a shock wave induced by a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser was analyzed by laser flash shadowgraphy. The peak pressure of the laser-induced shock wave was approximately two times greater than that of air breakdown at the same laser fluence. The proposed method of shock wave generation is expected to be useful in various applications of laser shock processing, including surface cleaning.