Modern aerospace gas turbines require large numbers of small diameter holes (<1 mm ) to provide cooling in the turbine blades, nozzle guide vanes, combustion chambers and afterburner. A typical modern engine will have ∼ 100,000 such holes. Drilling these cooling holes by Nd-YAG laser is now well established. Such holes can be successfully produced by laser trepanning, but this is a relatively slow process compared with laser percussion drilling both drilling techniques are performed using direct free space mirror delivery system. The aerospace industry would like to move to a fibre optic delivery system, but the only fibres capable of carrying the high peak powers involved are 600 µm core fibres with the associated poor beam and poor hole quality. By reducing the peak power of the laser and careful control of laser pulse and drilling parameters useful hole with good hole quality can be achieved. This paper investigates these parameters using a GSI Lumonics new JK700 series laser with a 400 µm optical fibre delivery system.
Skip Nav Destination
International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics
October 14–18, 2018
Orlando, FL, USA
ISBN:
978-0-912035-75-8
PROCEEDINGS PAPER
Laser percussion drilling of aerospace material using a 10kW peak power laser using a 400 µm optical fibre delivery system
P. W. French;
P. W. French
1
University of Liverpool, Department of Mechanical Engineering
, Liverpool, L69 3GH, UK
. p.french@liv.ac.uk
Search for other works by this author on:
Published Online:
October 01 2003
Citation
P. W. French, M. Naeem, K. G. Watkins; October 14–18, 2018. "Laser percussion drilling of aerospace material using a 10kW peak power laser using a 400 µm optical fibre delivery system." Proceedings of the International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics. ICALEO® 2003: 22nd International Congress on Laser Materials Processing and Laser Microfabrication. Orlando, FL, USA. (pp. 503). ASME. https://doi.org/10.2351/1.5060058
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.