Investigation of the Impact of the Pumping Beam Waist Size and Position on the Efficiency of YVO4/Nd : YVO4/YVO4 Laser Generation

This article presents the results of the investigation of the generation efficiency for different sizes and positions of the pumping beam waist inside the active medium of the YVO4/Nd : YVO4/YVO4 lasers. The measurements were carried out for a fixed resonator length of 36.1 mm, a constant pumping power of 1.16 W, and four output couplers with different radii of curvature. According to the knowledge of the authors, such an extended experimental approach is presented for the first time.

Time efficient laser modification of steel surfaces for advanced bonding in hybrid materials

Laser surface treatment of metals is one option to improve their properties for adhesive bonding. In this paper, a pulsed YVO4 Laser source with a wavelength of 1064 nm and a maximum power of 25 W was utilized to increase the surface area of the steel HCT490X in order to improve its bonding properties with a carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP). Investigated was the influence of the scanning speed of the laser source on the bonding properties. For this purpose, the steel surfaces were ablated at a scanning speed between 1500 and 4500 mm/s. Afterwards the components were bonded with the adhesive HexBond™ 677. After lap shear tests were carried out on the specimen, the surfaces were inspected using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The experiments revealed that the bonding quality can be improved with a high scanning speed, even when the surface is not completely ablated.