doi: 10.3850/978-981-11-0749-8_699
Nanosecond Laser Milling of the Amorphous Alloy Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10Be22.5
E. R. Williams1, E. B. Brousseau1, N. P. Lavery2, S. Mehraban2, V. L. Keast3, C. E. Hughes3 and K. D. M. Harris3
1School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
2College of Engineering, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom
3School of Chemistry, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom
Abstract
This paper reports complementary experimental and theoretical investigations focussed on the laser milling of the amorphous alloy Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10Be22.5, also known as Vitreloy 1, in ambient air, using 220 ns pulses. The conducted experiments showed that the formation of crystalline precipitates required a relatively large overlap between pulses when machining with a fluence of 6 J/cm2 and a pulse repetition frequency of 250 KHz. The loss of the fully amorphous nature of this material could also be achieved for a substantially smaller pulse overlap and frequency. In this case, the lower thermal load associated with the reduction in the value of these parameters was balanced by increasing the delivered fluence by one order of magnitude, i.e. 70 J/cm2. Using theoretical temperature profiles associated with the considered laser milling operations, it was suggested that different crystallisation phenomena could be at play between both levels of fluence values utilised.
Keywords: Nanosecond laser milling, Amorphous alloy, Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10Be22.5.
