Laser drilling of structural ceramics-A review

Structural ceramics are becoming widely popular in numerous fields because of high mechanical and physical properties. It is of great difficulty for conventional techniques to machine brittle and hard materials. As one of nontraditional machining methods, laser beam machining has emerged as an effective technique for drilling of ceramics. This paper reviews the research work on laser drilling of structural ceramics from its different pulse width. Lasers have been discussed to understand effects of critical experimental parameters on the quality characteristics and physical mechanisms involved in drilling ceramics. In addition, it is held that heat and liquid-assisted laser processing serves as a useful method to improve processing quality. Computational approaches of ANSYS and COMSOL are used to predict laser input parameters' effects on quality of hole and describe the physical phenomena during processing. Comments on laser drilling of ceramics developments and future directions are provided at the end. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.