Laser treatment is a common method of producing surface features on materials, like the “riblets” used for reduction of fluid drag in aviation and marine industries. A recent collaboration between Amplitude, Cailabs, ONERA and AlphaNov aims to determine an efficient method of producing these riblets on AU4G aluminium surfaces.
An important part of the process is beam-shaping. Ordinary laser beams have a Gaussian profile, with long tails on both sides of the peak intensity. By passing the beam from an Amplitude Tangor 100 femtosecond laser through a Cailabs CANUNDA-PULSE Multi-Plane Light Conversion beam-shaping module, a “top hat” beam profile was produced – one with a wide region of maximal intensity, and then very little trailing tail outside of that region. Shaping the beam dramatically improved the efficiency of the process, with top hat beams being up to 17 times faster at producing riblets than unshaped Gaussian beams.
If you’d like to know more about beam shaping and its applications, contact Raymax on (02) 9979 7646 or fill out the form below.
