Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

In this work, the use of an innovative, compact femtosecond laser operating in the GHz regime for laser ablation and microtexturing is investigated and discussed. The processing performances of burst mode for pulses shot in the GHz regime are numerically simulated. The proposed ablation model is based on the two-temperature model and considers, in a simplified way, the effect of plasma. The numerical results are compared in terms of ablation depth with experimental investigations on stainless steels. The numerical outputs allow an understanding of the influence of different process parameters and support the selection of the operating window where GHz laser became competitive with traditional ultrashort laser sources in the MHz regime.