laserbeamFoam: Laser ray-tracing and thermally induced state transition simulation toolkit

The application of high energy density photonic sources to the surface of metallic substrates causes localised topological evolution as the interface deforms due to hydrodynamic forces through fusion and vapourisation state transitions. Understanding how this laser energy is deposited, which may involve multiple reflection events, coupled with a thermal-fluid-dynamics framework capable of describing the heat and mass transfer in the system, permits accurate predictions of many important processes, including Laser Powder Bed Fusion, selective laser melting and laser welding among many others. In this work, we present laserbeamFoam: a multi-phase thermal-fluid-dynamics solver incorporating a ray-tracing algorithm and associated Fresnel equation implementation to determine the absorptivity of the discretised laser rays as a function of incidence angle through multiple reflections. laserbeamFoam is released under the GNU general public license with source code available on GitHub. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

The application of high energy density photonic sources to metallic substrates leads to localised topological evolution as the interface deforms under hydrodynamic forces. Understanding the deposition of laser energy, involving multiple reflection events, and using a thermal-fluid-dynamics framework, accurate predictions of important processes can be made. laserbeamFoam, a thermal-fluid-dynamics solver with ray-tracing and Fresnel equation implementation, is introduced in this work.