To grind fused silica in ductile mode, it was proposed to repair surface and subsurface micro cracks of fused silica by CO2 laser irradiation. However, excessive residual stress remains on the surface because the melt fused silica on the surface quenches in air. It causes the critical depth of cut for ductile grinding fused silica to be smaller than 0.2μm. To investigate the distribution of the residual stress and look for an optimal manner of irradiation to control residual tensile stress, a numerical model of was built for simulating the dynamic behavior of fused silica when irradiated by CO2 laser. Laser energy absorption, heat transmission, viscoelastic behavior of fused silica and thermally induced stress were considered in the numerical simulation. The results show how the residual stress is formed and distributed. We found that an appropriate control of the temperature field as a function of time and position in the laser process is the key to reduce the residual stress. Therefore, three kinds of processes were proposed to reduce residual tensile stress on the surface of fused silica introduced by laser irradiation. The residual stress distributions of these three processes were compared by numerical analysis to decide a better method of laser irradiation.
