The influence of laser ablation plume at different laser incidence angle on the impulse coupling coefficient with metal target

A calibrated pendulum measuring device and a dimensionless analysis method were used to measure the impulse coupling coefficient at different laser intensities with aluminum, steel, and iron targets. The experiment was performed with a pulsed laser with the wavelength of 1.06 mu m and the pulse duration of 7 ns. The experimental measurements of the variation of the impulse coupling coefficient versus the laser energy density agree with the theoretical prediction, and the optimum laser energy density correlated with the maximum impulse coupling coefficient corresponding to the theoretical predictions. The impulse coupling coefficients with laser incidence angles of 0 degrees and 45 degrees are compared for understanding of the effects of the ablation plume on the impulse coupling effect, and the experimental result shows that the impulse coupling effect grows as the incidence angle changes from 0 degrees to 45 degrees. Furthermore, the transmittance of the incident laser through the ablation plume in front of the target is deduced from the impulse measurements, and the effect of the ablation plume on the impulse coupling at high laser intensity is discussed. In order to investigate the weak impulse coupling effect, which is difficult to obtain from the experiments, the impulse coupling coefficient at low laser energy density was calculated by the finite element simulation. (C) 2016 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).