Estimation of the Heat-Affected Zone in Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics Exposed to CW Radiation of the Ytterbium Fiber Laser

Laser processing of carbon plastics caused the formation of a heat-affected zone (HAZ) degrading service properties of objects. Based on the calculation results for temperature fields, we estimate the dependences of the HAZ on the processing mode parameters for a modern processing plant based on a CW ytterbium fiber laser with a wavelength of 1.06 µm and radiation power of 1 kW. It is shown that to achieve a HAZ ≤ 150 µm required for industrial applications, it is recommended to perform processing in the multipass mode at a beam displacement velocity Vscan ≥ 5 m/s and pause duration between sequential passes of 0.1–0.5 s.